AFF's Doublethink

Is compromise possible between realists and neoconservatives? Are the ideas that animate realism and neoconservatism fundamentally incompatible? A look at the intellectual foundations of our nation’s foreign policy.

Can a right-wing renegade become governor of New Jersey?

Political liberty is screwed. Why libertarians can’t get it up.

Can the GOP win Virginia back?

What conservatism can offer disability activism.

How Solzhenitsyn got it right.

Amanda Carpenter has packed more than most into her 26 years.

How one Williamsburg doctor is reinventing health care.

We’re in a new hidey-hole, and as usual we’ve lost half a dozen things we really need: toothpaste, butter, even coffee. And now half asleep, feeling like I’ve got fur on my teeth, I’m supposed to figure out whether we can take a mother on our team. Someday, when I get my chance, I’m not gonna kill Them. (To be honest, I don’t even know if They die.) It’s going to be torture, and it’s going to be slow.

Maureen Beddis of Alexandria, Virginia, has a lot on her plate. She works 45 to 50 hours a week in a senior-level management job at The Vision Group, a nonprofit that promotes better vision care. She has a one-year-old daughter, Abby, who loves walks in the stroller along the Potomac River. She’s also caring for a six-year-old husky-lab mix named Cyrus, but what really makes her superwoman is that she’s doing all this on her own.

“The vast majority of Americans are not reading the Washington Post every day, and they are not following the intricate details of public policy debates,” Neil Bradley explains. “What are the things that most Americans are talking about? TV, music, and Hollywood have a tremendous impact on our culture. And that has a tremendous impact on politics.”

Is the New York literary scene dying? Is it in the midst of gasping its last erudite breath? It certainly wouldn’t be ridiculous to think so. Yet the most obvious bid to resuscitate the beast has been the literary journal n+1. Founded in 2003 by four 30-something Ivy Leaguers, n+1 described itself as “The Partisan Review, except not dead.”

Barack Obama was not the first African-American elected to the presidency. By my count, he was the seventh. It was just that he was the first nonfiction one. While pundits marveled over the fact that Americans could elect a man one generation removed from Africa to their highest office, popular culture was way ahead of the curve.

Of all the ways in which the mainstream media and liberal elite demonstrated a failure to understand the phenomenon of Alaska governor Sarah Palin, their reaction to the news of her teenage daughter Bristol’s pregnancy stands out.

In recent years, American conservatism has morphed from a smoke-filled room of martini-swilling adults into nothing short of a nursery. The Right, once known for its emphasis on individual accomplishment and personal responsibility, once a haven for those keen on adults making their own decisions, has linked arms with the stroller moms of Park Slope and put babies at the center of its universe.

It seems the old saw about Washington being recession-proof has gone the way of the conservative majority. For the city’s conservative job seekers, the legendarily insulated District could not have picked a worse time to mirror ‘Real America’s’ trends.

I see my guardian angel. She is sitting on the curb sucking bad coffee out of a hole in the lid of a paper cup. I am carrying groceries out to my car and there she is. It had been years, but of course I recognize her instantly. Still, she looks different. She hasn’t aged; I don’t know if angels do in fact age—she’ll probably look 18 forever—but she looks the worse for wear. Her eyes are sunk deep in their sockets, and she has dyed her hair black, in stark contrast to the bright, diffused light that wraps around her. She looks unhealthy; her sickly yellow skin belies her natural radiance and is pulled taut around her bones.

For someone who inadvertently triggered a clash of civilizations, Flemming Rose doesn’t look much like a provocateur. With his salt-and-pepper hair, college sweatshirt, and jeans over sneakers, the cultural editor of the largest Danish daily, Jyllands-Posten, seems disarmingly casual, a far cry from the frothing “Islamophobe” and “far-right” reactionary that some of his more intemperate detractors imagine him to be. But such is the reputation that has shadowed the mild-mannered Rose since September 30, 2005, when he published the 12 now-famous (or infamous) cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that took the world by storm.

A few years ago, no one would have predicted a site like www.SaveOurStarbucks.com. Created by entrepreneur Paul Konrardy after the financially troubled coffee chain announced in July that it would be closing 600 American stores, the site gives loyal customers a place to sign petitions urging the corporation to take their beloved shops off the [...]

The man sitting next to me is having a rough day. Bleary-eyed, shirt untucked, hair in mild disarray: He looks like life is moving faster than he’d like. Apparently, he thinks so as well; he’s reading a piece of Jehovah’s Witness literature on “How to Take Control of Your Life.” He’s sucking down his second beer with obvious relish, and it’s enough to make me think about getting a pint. But I won’t. Because we’re on a bus, and it’s 6:45 in the morning. Just another day on Foothill Transit, Line 187: the Murder Bus.

Whoever was in charge of deciding what to call each generation of feminism knew what she was doing when she settled on the metaphor of waves: Do what you will, they just keep coming. Well, the next wave has arrived.

All is the president of the eponymous David All Group (DAG), “the nation’s first conservative Web 2.0 agency.” All founded the group in 2007—the same year he launched Slatecard.com, a fundraising site for Republicans, and TechRepublican, a blog focusing on the intersection of politics and technology. All is not just looking to bridge the technological divide between Democrats and Republicans—he’s moving one step ahead.

Things hadn’t been well for a long time. He could afford to admit it now that it was all over, and he had returned home from the funeral, his mind starved of sleep. No tears, lamentations, or gaunt silences had marked his behavior. None of that or those solid chesty hugs friends give at times [...]

Maybe it’s fucking that’s in the air, and we just call it “love” because, under ideal circumstances, fucking ends up identified with love, the way coal may become a diamond if conditions are just so. One Catholic guy’s plea for modesty in an age of increasingly meaningless vulgarity.

This advice columnist doesn’t care if she hurts your feelings. Every week in a column syndicated in over 100 papers across America, Amy Alkon delivers hilariously hard-nosed counsel to thousands of clueless souls.

The fascinating untold story of Big Dairy, Big Government, and the war on unboiled milk.

Conservatives in 2008 are stuck in a monumental funk. Enter Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, who have written a provocative new treatise on a way out of the morass.

High Noon is routinely listed as one of the top American movies of all time. And it is almost universally acclaimed as one of the top three Westerns, if not the best Western ever made. With its transcendent themes of courage and honor, it appeals to people of vastly different political colors for different reasons.

Does the ultimate chick show have anything for a man?

From escort to White House correspondent, the self-styled “Voice of the New Media” abides. (From the print edition.)

Move over Austria and Chicago. George Mason University makes economics interesting.

The Beltway’s best and brightest never stop working — and never take credit.

Reason science reporter Ron Bailey’s recent conversion on global warming has other libertarians all fired up.

Reckoning with ten years of life lived in the shadow of the world’s biggest — and most elusive — indie rockers.

The Joe Trippi of the Right.

Everyone agreed it was a great party until Jesus arrived.

One woman’s quest for flesh.

Everything is half as dangerous as it’s supposed to be.

Why racism is still alive, and how conservatives can deal with it.

Why asking a favor is better than doing one.

Libertarian politics and funky grooves.

Why the hell would a libertarian move to Sweden?

Diane Sawyer and Barbara Walters used to mud-wrestle for this type of interview, back when the plum assignment was Mother Teresa or Princess Diana or Jennifer Aniston or President-elect Hillary Clinton. Men never get these gigs.

Despite his protests to the contrary, the legendary scientist was a believer — not in God, but in little green men.

What does copyright mean in a YouTube world? And who gets to decide?

Baylen Linnekin tastes the forbidden food and investigates why it’s so controversial.

Everyone who advocates sex education is advocating the imposition of a set of values, but only conservatives seem to realize it. In fact, they’re quite up front about it, while liberals tend to believe in some imaginary demarcation between ethics and policy that exists only in their heads.

Jeremy Lott’s unlikely path to political journalism.

For three days after he was fired, Francis sat in the living room, despondent, watching TV. Then he started playing the game.

The sketchy, scary business of bringing the fun to little Jackson’s birthday party.