Diplomacy has more to do with (credible) threats than with sweet reason. And threats from America are a lot more credible, nowadays.

I can't say I'm surprised: the grassroots antiwar movement keeps turning out to be MoveOn/A.N.S.W.E.R. astroturf.

Diplomacy has more to do with (credible) threats than with sweet reason. And threats from America are a lot more credible, nowadays.

The nannyism is partly to distract from the corruption — and partly just another opportunity to leverage it. A good general rule is that the more a government wants to run its citizens’ lives, the worse job it will do at the most basic tasks of government.

[W]hen you align yourself exclusively with one party, and weaponize yourself in that party's cause, you're going to pay the price when the other party is in power. That's the price you pay for whoring yourself out.

Where the U.N. is concerned, accountability is very thin on the ground in general.

You can't be halfhearted in a revolution. Values that serve well in a civil society don't work in a state of nature.