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Munitions crisis was foreseeable

During the 1979-80 hostage crisis, a defiant Iran starkly demonstrated the limits of American power. Forty-five years later, it is doing the same thing, although in different circumstances. Back then, when the post-Vietnam military was at a low ebb, we didn’t strike Iran, and a long-shot rescue operation ended in abject failure. Now, with the U.S. military at its most proficient and professional in history, we have inflicted punishing blows against the regime but still haven’t been able to impose our will, in part because we are running low on the munitions necessary to ...

Pittsburgh among first to see DSA rise

The rise of the Democratic left in Pittsburgh did not happen overnight. It was built over years through patient organizing, disciplined recruiting and a clear-eyed focus on the races that mattered most: low-turnout primaries where entrenched power was vulnerable. Mik Pappas’ 2017 race for Pennsylvania’s 31st Magisterial District judge offered an early hint that the local Democratic establishment was losing its grip on some of the contests it had once taken for granted. He was underfunded, openly aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America and not expected to mount a serious ...

Talking ourselves into failure

There are a couple of stories that seem unrelated but are very related. They show the story of a country that used to build things and has decided, without ever admitting it, that building is too hard. Start with the missiles. Rep. Mike Turner was on television last week talking about letting Ukraine license our Patriot technology and build the missiles themselves, because the threat is spreading and our defenses must spread with it. He is right. Think how strange that is. The most powerful country in history is handing another nation the recipe for our best defensive weapon because we ...

The good and bad of common good

For the second time in the Trump presidency, the Right is debating the concept of the common good and how that concept fits within the American political tradition. During Donald Trump’s first term, the “common good” debate raged because the president’s nationalist instincts and policy prescriptions on issues such as trade and immigration clashed with the more globalist preferences of the Republican Party establishment. The debate is now raging once again, it seems, because JD Vance, the odds-on favorite to become the 2028 GOP presidential nominee, is seen as sympathetic to ...

Making my bed isn’t about productivity

While visiting my mom, my son asked, “Why do I have to make my bed at Grandma’s house?” I smoothed the quilt over the mattress and answered without thinking, “Because Grandma likes it neat and she deserves a nice space.” My response surprised me. What did being tidy have to do with worth? I somehow managed to frame household chores as a matter of being deserving. Self-worth is a lifelong lesson for me. Like many of us, it’s something I’ve worked on through therapy and journaling. I confront my demons, and I like to think I’m slaying them one by one. I thought my ...

Four-letter words no substitute for thought

Swearing was once rare, reserved to convey the utmost shock, pain or rage, or the deepest disappointment, disgust or disbelief. The audiences at “Gone with the Wind” in 1939 were scandalized and titillated when Scarlett O’Hara asked Rhett Butler what would become of her if he left, and Rhett, played by Clark Gable, replied, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” At the signing of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, Vice President Joe Biden told President Barack Obama, “This is a big f---ing deal.” The then-veep at least had the discretion to whisper the obscenity, but ...