By John Thompson
There are a lot of people who seem cheered by the weakened status of the United States at the moment. They are fools and one can only hope that if their wishes come to pass, they become the first victims of the world that emerges when the Pax Americana ends. Alas, the universe simply isn’t that fair.
Peace is something whose existence we can construe from the occasional absence of war. In European history, between the creation of the modern nation state with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 (which ended the ghastly Thirty Years War) and the final downfall of Napoleon after the battle of Waterloo in 1815, there was scarcely a year without a war going on somewhere on the continent. Continue Reading »
Obama’s victory marked by a wealth of opportunity
Posted: November 15, 2008, 10:30 AM by Kelly McParland
Conrad Black, Full Comment, U.S. Politics
Having confidently predicted the victory of John McCain, and having stuck with that until his blunderbuss campaign blew up, I will offer a few thoughts to the incoming U.S. administration. Rarely have such comments been so profoundly unsolicited. Barack Obama has ignited more excitement and positive curiosity than any incoming government leader in the world since John F. Kennedy. He starts with an immense and fervent public relations honeymoon.
As one who drove with university friends in the early and mid-Sixties for a few weeks each spring in the United States, and well remembers the racial segregation even in the North, and the idle hopelessness of the sprawling, surly, black slums of the great cities of the North and Mid-West, I can only render deep homage to the reformist conscience of America. Continue Reading »
