Bear bombers and the general collapse of the status quo

An F-22 from the 302d Fighter Squadron at Elmendorf AFB, AK intercepts a Russian Tu-95MS Bear H. (USAF image)

New post up at Liberty Unyielding.  Enjoy!

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No, it’s not the Cold War: Ukraine and the paradigm shift

Have you felt the paradigm shift?  It’s happening all around us.  But I’m not sure most Western pundits have realized what they’re sensing (or perhaps even begun to sense it yet).

George Will’s column from the past week has stood out in my mind.  He’s by no means the only one, but he’s been one of the most categorical, putting the Ukrainian crisis in the terms of the Cold War.  “Ukraine’s ferment,” he suggests, “is an emphatic, albeit redundant, refutation of Marxism.”

I don’t think I’m alone in recognizing that that formula has been overtaken by events.

Egypt: This is big

One way to gauge the import of the conflict erupting in Egypt is by looking at the character of media coverage in America.  Both sides of the political spectrum have been slow to advance narratives of blame.  What’s going on in Egypt doesn’t fit into any pat, off-the-shelf narratives.

There has been a curious absence of “themage” on the left: no unified narrative about this all being the fault of Bush-era failures of good fellowship, or of the plight of the Palestinians, or (my personal favorite) of warmongering arms dealers, oil mavens, or ([insert ROTFLOL here]) international banks.

Meanwhile, blame-fixing criticisms of President Obama are getting little traction on the right.  (I even saw Sean Hannity shouted down by other conservatives the other day, when he was advancing an Obama’s-to-blame theory.)  I have the sense that most on the right see –

Facts and implications: Notes on Diana West’s American Betrayal

What are the implications of the extensively documented fact that agents of the Soviet government were employed in high positions in the United States government in the 1930s and 1940s?  Do we have a skewed view of World War II because we have failed to address that question?  If our perspective changed, would we judge that we didn’t even win World War II – but, to be more accurate, Stalin did?

Diana West’s remarkable new book, American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character, compiles some potential answers to these questions.  As West argues early in the book,

The Iron Lady

 

Photo: Rex Nils Jorgensen

The news this morning is that Margaret Thatcher died of a stroke this morning, 8 April, at her home in Britain.  According to her children, she died of a stroke.  She was 87.

There is no need to follow the journalistic convention of noting her profession.  Everybody knows who she was.  She has been