April 5, 2005

The Collapse of the American Empire

It is quite ironic: only a decade or so after the idea of the United States as an imperial power came to be accepted by both right and left, and people were able to talk openly about an American empire, it is showing multiple signs of its inability to continue. Indeed, it is now possible to contemplate its collapse. The neocons in power in Washington these days, who were delighted to talk about America as the sole empire in the world following the Soviet disintegration, will of course refuse to believe in any such collapse. But I think it behooves us to examine seriously the ways in which the U.S. system is so drastically imperiling itself that it will cause not only the collapse of its worldwide empire but vast changes on the domestic front as well.
April 5, 2006

Liberals and Conservatives: Relics of the Past

When former Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards and Illinois Democratic Senator Barack Obama recently spoke to packed houses in Burlington, they provided glaring evidence that there is “noth­ing new under the sun” in mainstream U.S. two-party politics. Both delivered speeches laced with pseudo-liberal blather, Obama delivering a “call to action” similar to Howard Dean’s 2004 “Take Back America” campaign. As Edwards and Obama recited one liberal Democratic cliché after another, a discerning listener couldn’t help but be struck by how completely irrelevant the terms “liberal” and “conservative” have become in today’s twenty-first-century world. Those who openly iden­tify themselves with either of the terms are anachronistic and out of touch with reality.
February 7, 2013

Operation El Dorado: The Road to a Resource War in Afghanistan

As troops and planes headed toward Afghanistan more than a decade ago, few people initially questioned the reasons for that military engagement. An enemy that didn’t […]
February 12, 2013

STEM as Vermont’s Urban Myth? By William J. Mathis

Maybe it’s time we turned the shortage of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) political bloviations over to Mythbusters. We haven’t heard this many anguished cries […]
February 15, 2013

The Spendagon: A Stampede of Hysterics

I read two critically important reports this week on the impact that sequestration would have on national defense. That possible reduction in military spending — $48 […]
February 15, 2013

Skin in the Game

The old-fashioned school districts that provided me with a convenient example in last week’s post here on The Archdruid Report represent a mode of politics that nobody, but nobody, talks […]
March 6, 2013

Prisons for profit: The new slave labor

In the decades after World War II the American people built up the greatest and most broadly shared prosperity the world had ever know. That immense […]
March 18, 2013

Down the Rabbit Hole With Jabberwock and Drone Strikes

When it came to the Senate filibuster on drone killings, the stupid party held the floor, the craven party mostly kept quiet, and the victims had […]
March 25, 2013

KEYSTONE PIPELINE: U.S. Pays Foxes To Assess Henhouse As Delicious

What Is It Called When You Outsource Your Autonomy? So it turns out that friends of the oil industry wrote the environmental impact [1]statement[1] issued by […]
April 3, 2013

Hunger Games: Vermont As Mockingjay

Let’s be clear: Suzanne Collins’ 3 volume “Hunger Games” trilogy is among the most disturbing young adult fiction ever to occupy elementary school library shelves. And?! […]