PATRICK LAWRENCE: Enforcing Orthodoxy
To censor is an act of deprivation, a taking away. To enforce an intolerant orthodoxy is an act of imposition. The two cannot be understood separately from one another. YouTube’s decision to remove a Consortium NewsCN Live! segment on Feb. 24 formidably takes its…
“Another dissident colonel.”
An exchange with Douglas Macgregor. Two centuries ago, the British statesman John Bright warned against “following visionary phantoms in all parts of the world while your own country is becoming rotten within.” It is symptomatic of how diseased American strategic…
“The China choice.”
Between reason and paranoia. News arrived yesterday that the U.S. Navy dispatched a guided-missile destroyer, the USS Curtis Wilbur, on one of those “freedom of navigation” sails through the Taiwan Strait. The Wilbur’s home port is Yokosuka, a harbor and shipyard south of…
“The Forgotten War.”
Q & Aing with Ambassador John Evans. Last week The Scrum began video-recording a new series of question-and-answer exchanges with leading international relations experts, thinkers, and practitioners. Our first guest, I am pleased to say, was Ambassador John Evans. John’s learned and…
“Minimum wage mythologies.”
Fifty years of analytic scams. The Congressional Budget Office’s latest assessment on the impacts of President Biden’s proposed increase in the minimum wage to $15/hour, issued at the beginning of February, is both predictable and disappointing. While acknowledging that 27 million people…
“The great reset, part 2.”
An attempted corporate coup. Second of two parts. In their Reset primer, Klaus Schwab and Thierry Malleret consider what the post–Covid world might look like at various levels of civilization. While the authors frequently inject their vague and utopian hopes and wishes…
“The great reset.”
Neoliberalism 2.0. First of two parts. There are rumblings among the Right and Libertarian factions of Western politics about a horrific plan that Davos Man intends to unleash upon mankind: The Great Reset! While Western conservatives and libertarians depict this as some sort of globalist attempt…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: The Diplomacy of No Diplomacy
We now watch as Biden and his foreign policy people effectively allow Israel to dictate the conditions under which the president can fulfill his campaign promise on Iran. A return to diplomacy: Let us hold this thought up to the light….
“Sanctions and drift.”
America’s alienating addiction. Trans–Atlantic drift—the creeping alienation of Americans and Europeans—is nothing new. Certainly it predates Trump—let us be clear on this straightaway. Depending on how one counts, this problem extends back to the mid–Cold War decades, when the Continent…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Biden’s Missing Link with Europe
While the Continent welcomed the Cold War’s end, America — which would be utterly lost without an enemy — never has. President Joe Biden at last got his chance to “sit at the head of the table” when he addressed (virtually, of…