Critics of America's intervention in Libya have wondered how much we really know about the antigovernment opposition. This is a legitimate line of inquiry. We should be thinking about the devil we may not know. But in Libya today there is also a devil we do know. His name is Muammar Qaddafi. Born in the

In recent months, in response to a series of austerity measures, we have seen civic unrest in the streets of London, Athens, and other European capitals. Some of the cuts that sparked the chaos are quite moderate. In France, for example, violence broke out over the government's proposal to raise the retirement age from 60

Good grief. Former governor Mike Huckabee said in an interview that President Obama grew up in Kenya. His press spokesman clarified that Huckabee meant to say Indonesia. One problem, of course, is that, in the interview, Huckabee mentioned the Mau Mau revolution, which occurred in Kenya, not Indonesia. For another, Huckabee was asked, “How come we don’t

State of the Union speeches are typically unimpressive and unmemorable. Last night’s address by President Obama was in that tradition. While his delivery was fine, the speech itself was mediocre — flat, undisciplined and unfocused, at times pedestrian and banal, with goals seemingly pulled out of thin air (e.g., by 2035, 80 percent of America’s

On this holiday honoring his birth, it is worth reminding ourselves why Martin Luther King Jr. deserves the place he holds in the American imagination. Dr. King was — with Jefferson, Madison, and Lincoln — our nation’s most effective advocate for the American ideal. How he became so is itself a fascinating story. King graduated

You would have to be living on another planet not to be aware of the effort by some on the left and in the media to blame conservatives for creating a “climate of hate” that encouraged a suspect, Jared Loughner, to attempt the political assassination of Representative Gabrielle Giffords, which resulted in the death of six

Democrats are enraged at President Obama for his decision to extend George W. Bush’s tax cuts for all Americans, including top income earners. What explains their anger? It cannot be because of concern for the deficit. After all, Democrats are responsible for an unprecedented two-year spending binge (the United States spent $1.3 trillion more over

At the core of every social, political, and economic system is a picture of human nature (to paraphrase 20th-century columnist Walter Lippmann). The suppositions we begin with — the ways in which that picture is developed — determine the lives we lead, the institutions we build, and the civilizations we create. They are the foundation

The aftermath of President Obama's meeting yesterday with the GOP leadership sparked a discussion that recurs with some regularity within conservative circles. (President Obama pronounced the meeting “extremely civil,” and Republicans concurred.) The argument is sometimes made, directly or obliquely, that civility is merely a guise, the first step toward bipartisan compromises that betray conservative