Latest work
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A special sundae school
Read more: A special sundae schoolIce cream can be a great political preamble. Butterscotch has a political side. You just need to listen for it. I had no choice. Every Sunday after the Washington talk shows my father would scoop me up and take me to the local ice cream parlor. He didn’t drive, and…
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Whimpers before roars
Read more: Whimpers before roarsNow, say some, the EU is the master and Italy the slave. Reverse American history for a moment. Think of a country composed of a few dozen states, each sovereign and separately governed though contiguous. Imagine a transcendent figure eager to unite the whole, broadening law and creating a national…
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Honoring words
Read more: Honoring wordsSergio Mattarella’s very legal “no.” Casual borrowing of meaningful political and ideological concepts can push sane debate toward ill-advised fringes and beyond. Take fascism. During 1960s upheaval, Western student radicals found it fashionable to call all police fascists, particularly after violent clashes and arrests. For my progressive father, who’d helped…
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Good times, and bad
Read more: Good times, and badFor The Times, the Lega Nord’s Matteo Salvini is “a sweatshirt-wearing member of Parliament who has turned what was the regional Northern League into a national far-right party…” Liberal elitism can be as exasperating as conservative buffoonery. Both indulge caricature and cliché, sly or loud. Consider a recent New York…
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Lions and tigers, and numbers
Read more: Lions and tigers, and numbersNumero 77, numero sei, numero 77… The woman’s voice began early this morning and every few minutes has repeated the same sequence. Numero 77, numero 6, numero 77 – number 77, number 6. Her amplified voice seems to rise up from beyond the trees in the vast gardens that adjoin my home.…
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Legends
Read more: LegendsWhat mattered to National Geographic’s editors wasn’t the potency of images, which often spoke for themselves, but words that would help readers gain greater insight into what they were seeing and why it mattered. Among the toughest jobs for a young journalist to land in the antediluvian 20th-century was a…
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