“I doubt if we ever come back home,” says Helen, who until recently taught English to second- and third-graders in Mykolaiv, a southern Ukrainian city of several hundred thousand. “Putin wants Mykolaiv,” Helen says. A large majority of Mykolaiv residents speak Russian at home. The . . . . Continue Reading »
Among conservatives today there is an emerging confidence about the nation. But it remains a timid confidence, expressed among fellow-travelers but not in the broader political culture. Awkwardness still prevails. We are living “after globalism,” yet we are embarrassed by our return to the . . . . Continue Reading »
The First Universal Nation: Leading Indicators and Ideas About the Surge of America in the 1990sBy Ben J. WattenbergThe Free Press, 418 pages, $22.95 Ben Wattenberg is America’s most prominent optimist. He is notoriously reassuring about the condition of what has in his mind become “the first . . . . Continue Reading »