AFF's Doublethink

The administration’s alumni two years on.

Lessons from Right to Left:The Rise of the Liberal Policy MachineEmily SmithThe rise of DC’s liberal policy machineFeaturesGame OverElizabeth Nolan BrownPickup artists and social conservatives hook up.An Investment PiecePhoebe MaltzOn the new feel-good frugality.Full HouseAlexandra SquitieriOur fascination with super-sized families.The Bushies Strike BackJohn McCormackThe administration’s alumni two years on.CultureFull HouseAlexandra SquitieriOur fascination with super-sized families.

A Vet for Freedom talks health care.

On the new feel-good frugality.

The rise of DC’s liberal policy machine

Our fascination with super-sized families.

Pickup artists and social conservatives hook up.

How “Glee” became a preachy after-school special.

Open Source DemocracyAre bloggers the new legislative watchdogs?John McCormackAre bloggers the new legislative watchdogs?FeaturesAll Camped OutRita KoganzonHow “Glee” became a preachy after-school special.The Rise of the Muckraking RightJacob LaksinHow conservative bloggers are scooping the New York Times.Average JanesHelen RittelmeyerTo save feminism, get rid of the lady blogs.What’s Your Story?What’s Your Story? Matt ContinettiEmily SmithDefending Sarah [...]

Defending Sarah Palin against her critics.

Christopher Caldwell’s reluctant case for an Americanized Europe.

To save feminism, get rid of the lady blogs.

How conservative bloggers are scooping the New York Times.

Are bloggers the new legislative watchdogs?

This is the fourth in a series of four articles trying to come to terms with Obama’s foreign policy. Click here to read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

It turns out that there is an Obama Effect—or at least there is one in France. After a particularly bleak couple of years, the approval rating [...]

This is the fourth in a series of four articles trying to come to terms with Obama’s foreign policy. Click here to read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 4.

Few things have been more poorly understood about the Obama administration than its foreign policy. Partisan and ideological blinders have tended to obscure and distort how [...]

The contrast between the “hardheadedness” of the Bush administration and the fresh look approach of Obama is predicated on the claim that the former twiddled its thumbs while Rome burned. But the world’s problems aren’t proving particularly amenable to the Obama approach either.

Learning for a LivingIn Defense of Vocational Ed.Liam JulianImagine a 17-year-old who does not want to attend college (or at least not right away); who finds parsing Macbeth maddeningly immaterial; who yearns to learn a practical skill and put it to use; who feels his personal strengths are being ignored and wasted. Too often, such [...]

Starting a business in the middle of a recession.

Why women and fiction remain unsolved problems.

Why is the reality of being a conservative in a cultural field so disconnected from the rhetoric of right-wing pundits?

Imagine a 17-year-old who does not want to attend college (or at least not right away); who finds parsing Macbeth maddeningly immaterial; who yearns to learn a practical skill and put it to use; who feels his personal strengths are being ignored and wasted. Too often, such a pupil has no other options. He has no educational choice.

Doublethink Quarterly:The New Dominion BluesJohn McCormackCan the GOP win Virginia back?FeaturesToward a Bioethics of LoveHelen RittelmeyerWhat conservatism can offer disability activism.Lonegan’s ChargeJacob LaksinCan a right-wing renegade become governor of New Jersey?The Sex VoteJames PoulosPolitical liberty is screwed. Why libertarians can’t get it up.The Hipster Health Care RevolutionElizabeth Nolan BrownHow one Williamsburg doctor is reinventing health [...]

Female sexuality may be seen as a distraction for politicians, but it’s also a powerful tool when used correctly. And as Palin’s campaign demonstrated, women are getting much more adept at using it to their advantage.

Easy to access, and satisfyingly potent, “sinful” products and pastimes represent a point of civilization that mankind has been pursuing for thousands of years. Abuseable substances and activities should be encouraged as a test of character for the next generation. If people are not forced recognize individual responsibility, civilization will crumble under the weight of all the helpless sheep expecting to be looked after.

The word “onanism” has its genesis in Genesis itself, from the story of Onan, a man killed by God for “spill[ing his seed] on the ground” rather than impregnating his widowed sister-in-law according to the laws of his tribe. Originally interpreted as a warning against the practice of coitus interruptus, the story’s cautions were [...]

As NATO meets for its 60th anniversary in Strasbourg-Kehl this weekend, it has a lot on its plate: war-fighting, peacekeeping, piracy, and more. But the problem for today’s NATO lies not in taking on new missions; it lies in carrying them out effectively.

Europe will be closely watching as leaders of its two most important partners—Russia and America—meet for the first time on April 1. The meeting between President Obama and Russian President Medvedev is expected to be absent of points of tension, but Europeans will try to read between the lines to see if the Obama Administration’s “reset” rhetoric will translate into action or will be stonewalled by the Russians.

President Obama’s decision earlier this month to overturn restrictions on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research was widely praised by supporters. Yet even setting aside the moral controversy involved, there are good reasons to challenge the wisdom of devoting public dollars to the cause.

On March 9, President Obama signed an Executive Order clearing the way to lift Bush-era restrictions on the use of federal funds in embryonic stem cell research. The move was widely seen as part of his Inaugural Address promise to “restore science to its rightful place.” But what is science’s “rightful place”? Does Obama himself know?

Nancy L. Rosenblum’s On the Side of the Angels is an ambitious book that both attempts to understand the disdain for parties and partisanship, and also to provide a defense of these institutions. She calls her book an “act of reparation”—an effort to find a place for parties and partisanship within political theory as integral social and moral institutions rather than pathologies we must eradicate.

Why, one wonders, does Jon Stewart’s contempt focus on newsmen to the exclusion of the news makers? Why do Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson deserve scorn and humiliation, but not the leaders they follow lockstep on the left and right? Might it be because they offer easier and more tempting targets to Stewart, while taking aim at actual leaders might dry up his guest pool?

Most people or things that are said to have been enormously famous or influential in their day but now forgotten, turn out either to net a Jesus- or Elvis-worthy tally of Google hits, or never to have been particularly famous or influential to begin with. If any book truly defies the strictures of that much-abused formula, it is surely David Riesman’s Lonely Crowd.

At about the same time that news of the Rod Blagojevich scandal broke in Illinois, a similar “scandal” of sorts was playing out in the rarified world of classical music. The case concerned Gilbert Kaplan, a successful American businessmen who translated an obsession with Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 (“Resurrection”) into an unlikely second career as a Mahler scholar and amateur conductor. What does his ascent tell us about the future of classical music?

Whenever it seems as though something momentous and exciting is about to happen here, prepare to be disappointed. In spite of earlier signs of a thaw in U.S.-Cuba relations, last week, Cuban president Raul Castro sacked several members of his cabinet, replacing two of the most well-known politicians in the country with military hard-liners.

Zack Snyder’s adaptation of “Watchmen” is slavishly committed to the details of Alan Moore’s original comic book. From its opening sequence to its final moments, Mr. Snyder loyally renders the story as close to the comic book as humanly possible, meaning the need to move the action along often takes a back seat to speeding [...]

Obama’s ongoing task is to honestly assess the place in which Americans find themselves, but he must do so in a way that does not boomerang on him, pulling the country into despondency. He is not off to a great start.

The women who have penned some of the most sought-out advice columns are experts in a kind of social history. Not only have they memorized (and written) tomes on etiquette, social mores, and cultural behavior, they are able to sort out the logic behind the traditional method, what about it is important to retain even in modern society, and how best to apply it.

In October of last year, German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück was clucking about the financial crisis being “America’s problem”. Now, it turns out that Europe may be sliding into a hole wholly of its own devising.

With last week’s passage of a $787 billion stimulus package, for which the words “largest ever” don’t even seem to do justice, the defenders of the free market have gone into hiding. It’s time they found their voice again.

While President Obama tries to wrap up Iraq and Afghanistan and soothe our alliances, the future of the U.S. alliance with Poland is uncertain. Poles fear that they will once again be sacrificed to the Russian machine. Just how much is the new president willing to bargain away?

20 years after he left the Oval Office and nearly five years since hey died, two things seem clear: Ronald Reagan’s achievements were greater than seemed possible at the time of his scandal-filled presidency, and those achievements have been willfully misinterpreted by a Republican Party that often seems blind to the changes that have swept America since the Reagan years.

In contrast to the extraordinary insight that Ronald Reagan demonstrated with regard to the Soviet Union, his assessments of Nicaragua and Iran rested on a perilous measure of wishful thinking. The challenge for us today is to reconcile how greatness can co-exist with profound flaws, as it did in so many of our Founding Fathers.

There is something in the nature of democracy that opposes us to the task of electing the best man in America. We much prefer the opportunity to vote for the man (or woman) who represents the best of America. Ronald Reagan, in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s phrase, was just such a ‘representative man’—less a heroic executive than a popular legislator elected to embody public opinion in a vast district that reached from sea to shining sea.

The fact that John Updike, who died January 27 at age 76, spent so much of his time reviewing books rather than writing more novels says something about how important he considered literary discussion and debate. We’re likely to see less of both with the announcement that the Washington Post is ceasing publication of its Sunday stand-alone book review section.

A moment, please, to investigate…. No, indeed, we belong not to a small country parish in Devonshire, Britannia, in the year of Our Lord 1660; rather, we exist in these United States of America in the 21st century and attend this Catholic Church, in which one is not blessed with one’s own private space in exchange for monies.

The recessionary release of Finnish writer/director Aki Kaurismäki’s Proletariat Trilogy through the Criterion Collection’s Eclipse Series—”a selection of lost, forgotten, or overshadowed classics in simple, affordable editions”—is a case of prescient timing.  Worth viewing in any economic climate, this blue-collar suite carries particular resonance in our current era of toppling markets and tightening belts.

A “new era of responsibility” has quickly emerged as the tagline for President Barack Obama’s inaugural address. Yet new eras of responsibility seem to begin every four years in Washington. La plus ça change…

On the eve of what might be called “The Afghan Surge,” NATO is preparing to open new supply routes to support its increasingly precarious mission in Afghanistan. With the U.S. deploying up to 30,000 more troops into the war-torn country this year—and routes through Pakistan under attack—clearing these new supply arteries couldn’t come at a [...]

Danny Boyle has become famous for setting misery to an upbeat tempo. In his latest, Slumdog Millionaire, he sets torture, murder and a corrupt game show to a soundtrack that mixes Bollywood beats and Western pop music.