PATRICK LAWRENCE: The Dialectic of the Draft
Americans will understand themselves less fantastically if they consider the extent to which the end of the Selective Service System a half century ago gave them permission to put their public selves to sleep. It is 50 years ago now…
Patrick Lawrence: Independent Journalism as It Was
This is an extract from Lawrence’s Journalists and Their Shadows, available now from Clarity Press, or as a pre-order from Google Books or Amazon. To know the [U.S.] Guardian’s history was to recognize it among the remarkable endeavors of twentieth-century journalism. Cedric Belfrage and James Aronson,…
Patrick Lawrence: Reading the Mess the Democrats Have Made
At writing, we are 16 months and five days from the 2024 presidential election. If a week is a long time in politics, there is too strong a chance that the interim upon us will prove one of awful eventfulness….
Patrick Lawrence: No, The Truth About Biden Is Not Democratic
Let us cast our minds back just briefly to the very fine afternoon of July 22, 2016. It was an especially bright Friday, as you may recall, because WikiLeaks released a lot of Democratic Party emails that day, so shining…
The US Press, Spooks & the Church Committee
Nineteen fifty-three was a peculiar year for The Washington Post to question the C.I.A.’s drift into activist intrigues, writes Patrick Lawrence in this excerpt from his forthcoming book, Journalists and Their Shadows. On Jan. 9, 1953, The Washington Post published an editorial we can read all…
Patrick Lawrence: Anything Anything Anything To Avoid Debating R.F.K. Jr.
Our corporate newspapers and broadcasters went into attack mode as soon as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. announced, in mid–April, he would seek the Democratic Party’s nomination to run for president next year. But it does not seem to have been…
Patrick Lawrence: The ‘Disinformation Industry’ Lands in Court
What kind of a week was last week in the theater of war wherein battles rage over illegal censorship, illegal attacks on freedom of speech, illegal government infringements on our constitutional rights, and, amid it all, the complicity of our…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: A Yellen in the China Shop
Janet Yellen did an excellent job during her just-completed four-day visit to Beijing, we are now able to read in the corporate press. The Treasury secretary managed not to break any more China in the China shop. This counts as…
Patrick Lawrence: We Need to Talk About Nahel
What is it about France these days? La republique seems to be ever on the brink of exploding over one or another social question. Twice in the past four months the French have erupted in protests and all too often rioting. In…
Patrick Lawrence: The Bidens’ Burisma Bribery
Let us cast our minds back just briefly to the very fine afternoon of July 22, 2016. It was an especially bright Friday, as you may recall, because WikiLeaks released a lot of Democratic Party emails that day, so shining a light…