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“A yearend conversation.”
The Scrum’s founding editors gather to look back and forward. This afternoon, our last of the year, we convened via Zoom to take a (not so fond) look back at the year that was. We spoke from Washington, Toronto, and…
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PATRICK LAWRENCE: Trump’s Foreign Policy Explained
Trump arrived in Washington as a New York property man unfamiliar with the permanent DC establishment, but determined to make deals where others dare not go. Chaos was the result. “Some friendly health advice to Iran,” President Donald Trump tweeted last Wednesday….
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“The Biden blackout.”
“Soft despotism” is upon us. This article first appeared on The Scrum. DECEMBER 17—Those who followed events in 2016 with sufficient acuity will have registered events it is now well to recall. In the infra dig response of liberals to…
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PATRICK LAWRENCE: The Assassins & Iran
Any thought of Biden and his people riding into town on white horses to save the nuclear deal is strictly naïve. I was on the telephone with a friend in Tehran Sunday and found myself telling him about a Christmas card…
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“Thanksgiving thoughts.”
Grounds for gratitude. Rummaging around for something to be thankful for this apparently thankless season seems to be the favored flavor this Thanksgiving. The New York Times recruited the safely tame poets laureate of these United States to make some suggestions and…
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PATRICK LAWRENCE: Hillary Clinton at the UN?
Whether or not Biden appoints her, things are getting very brazen and very bitter, very fast. We are now told that President-elect Joe Biden may name none other than Hillary Clinton to be his ambassador to the United Nations. This…
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AFTER A RIGHT WING COUP, SOCIAL DEMOCRACY MAKES A COMEBACK
As Americans were dancing in the streets with the ousting of Trump, so the people of Bolivia celebrated the return of Evo Morales, first indigenous president after a coup forced him to flee. The new president is Luis Arce, former…
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“Our eternal present.”
America has stopped becoming. “Four more years” used to be the way campaigning incumbents decorated bumper stickers. It was Nixon’s promise (or threat) as he sought a second term in 1972, if I am not mistaken. Now the election of…
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Empire with a Human Face
The Biden people are unlikely to speak of a new cold war with China, but they appear likely to wage one all dressed up as a sophisticated trans–Pacific strategy. Those boneheaded Trump people explained their hostile, xenophobic, fated-to-fail policy toward…