We live in a deeply serious time with deeply unserious leaders. Historian Niall Ferguson has written that the “extreme violence of the twentieth century” was precipitated by three preconditions: “ethnic conflict, economic volatility, and empires in decline.” It is difficult not to see ...

This column is the last chapter of my book, “If History Is of Any Value: Politics, Culture, and the Unimaginable Event of 2019-2022” (forthcoming in December 2022). The book begins with columns written between May and September 2020 that traced parallels between the antebellum and Civil ...

Europe is running out of time to save itself. Those of us here on the continent feel like we’re watching an entirely avoidable slow-motion train wreck, whose protagonists horrifically insist on blowing past every possible exit ramp en route to disaster. The warnings keep rolling in one ...

Labor Day is a day to pay tribute to American workers. Traditionally it is observed on the first Monday of September so this year we will observe it this coming Monday. Job Service North Dakota reported that labor statistics for July, the most recent statistics available, show the state’s ...

Last Friday, at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Fed chair Jerome Powell said that the Fed must continue to raise interest rates, even though it will “bring some pain to households and businesses.” This is nuts. True, inflation is near a four-decade high. But the Fed’s aggressive effort to tame ...

I wrote a column in 2011, as the presidential politics of the upcoming year were starting to unfold, with the headline “Why 2012 looks a lot like 1860.” The deep fracturing of the American electorate -- remember the Tea Party? -- leading up to the 2012 presidential election was starting ...