Home Columns Books Papers Biography Contact

"Tradition?? The only good traditions are food traditions. The rest are repressive."

"There are two ways to think. The first is to trust to your ancestors, your religious leaders, or your charismatic professors. The second is to question, to challenge, to explore history for meanings, and to analyze issues. This latter is called Critical Thinking, and it is this that is the mission of my web site. "

Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman  

November 2023

Minority Rule (1 of 2)


If one were to ask dozens of people on the street what is wrong with our country today, they would probably say the lies that have divided us into factions, or the tremendous gap in earnings between the corporate heads and the rest, or the corruption in the legal community (the Supreme Court the most) that suggests our justice system is crumbling

A new book, just released, has made me see a bigger picture about what is wrong with us and how it can be fixed. In the book: Ty more...

Print

September 2023

World America Made (2 of 2)


To what degree is the present world order dependent on American power and its unique qualities? What would the future international order be if the US were no longer shaping it? Who could replace us? And is our power really declining? These are all questions asked by historian Robert Kagan in his 2012 book, The World America Made, discussed in our last column.

We have not done it alone, of course. Broad historical forces (evolution of science and technology, availability more...

Print

The World America Made (1 of 2)


We take it for granted that our world today is the inevitable benefit of evolution. Comparing today with any other century in the past, and we can see that most human beings are freer, have more choices, than our ancestors. This is certainly true for technological changes. Modern energy (replacing fire and the horse); travel (train, plane, car, ship) is better than horse and carriage; medicine (vaccines, drugs, surgery) is light years better than the barber/surgeon; even how we treat wo more...

Print

November 2022

Revolutiions in Russia and Iran


Our world has swung from a new passion for democracy at the end of the cold war to a pushback and swing to autocracy today. Now comes another swing: a revolt against ruthless autocrats.

It always seems hopeless once a dictator has seized power to get rid of him. Badly run countries in. the hands of an autocrat have managed to suppress demonstrations against their power. But no matter how much they control the courts, destroy the credible press, and are willing to kill opp more...

Print

June 2022

Russia and China: Frenemies?


We are so fixed on what Russia is doing to Ukraine that we are not watching China. American policy has often been wrong about the relationship between Russia and China. During the Vietnam War, we thought that all Communists were the same, and missed an opportunity to divide Russia from China.
Now we obsess on China?s seeming backing of Russia?s genocidal behavior. China has publicly objected to Russia?s violation of an independent neighboring country, hypocritically not mentioning more...

Print

Disgruntled, Hating Everything

April 8, 2022
Laina Farhat-Holzman
Pajaronian

Perhaps one-third of our population is disgruntled (unhappy, annoyed, and angry). Disgruntled is a word that dates back to the Middle Ages and derives from "to grunt."

We daily see the film clips of the mobs who attacked Congress on January 6. Faces were angry, voices were loud, and intentions were clear: search out elected representatives and kill as many as possible. They shouted profanity and during the more...

Print

Reliable Sources: How Do You Know That? (Part 2)

With a few exceptions, (such as the sunrise appears in the east, the earth is a globe, and the moon has predictable cycle), we cannot know that something is undeniable. Almost all other reliable facts are conditional. Truth depends upon honest witnesses, experienced observers, or professionally trained and peer reviewed expertise. The following list has served me well as a historian and commentator.

Science.
Western science is a process that changes as new information comes more...

Print

Putin: A Genius or Unhinged?

Russia specialists (historians, former ambassadors, intelligence operatives) seem to have some disagreement on the mental state of Vladimir Putin. In his two decades of leadership after the fall of the Soviet Union, he has slowly morphed Russia from a new liberal democracy to a dangerous illiberal democracy.

Liberal democracy is governed by rule of law, (separation of powers, independent press, independent courts, and honest elections). Such democracies are only as good as the peo more...

Print

December 2021

Celebrating Food in History

At this time of year, we all celebrate some sort of food feasts to commemorate the past. These are not just meals, but are nostalgia for the past, a gift to our own families and friends.

For me, as an unapologetic historian (which includes food history), this is an opportunity to feast with respect for foods that have played a much longer role than just our families in what makes us human and civilized.

First, we are the only creatures who cook our food, a skill ear more...

Print

Infrastructure Provisions: Part 1


Our history shows us that our usually slow-moving republic can periodically make leaps of progress that immeasurably better the lives of our citizens. If this happened too often, it could be destabilizing. But over time, we find needs that have not been met or require governmental planning. These leaps began almost immediately after becoming a nation.

President Jefferson promoted an infrastructure program that built the Erie Canal system along the rivers of New York that m more...

Print

Infrastructure Provisions: Part 1


Our history shows us that our usually slow-moving republic can periodically make leaps of progress that immeasurably better the lives of our citizens. If this happened too often, it could be destabilizing. But over time, we find needs that have not been met or require governmental planning. These leaps began almost immediately after becoming a nation.

President Jefferson promoted an infrastructure program that built the Erie Canal system along the rivers of New York that m more...

Print

Solving the Alienation


As I wrote in my last column, Fiona Hill, our former Russia expert who served in the Obama and Trump administrations, has provided a unique examination of comparable popular discontent in the US, England, and Russia. By comparing them, she has focused on a common cause: societal disruption so rapid and severe that large sectors of society are left feeling abandoned. When people are feeling abandoned by their governments, they are vulnerable to populist scoundrels who promise them leaders more...

Print

August 2021

Threats to Democracy

Historians of democracy are becoming alarmed at the possibility of the United States, the oldest continuous participatory government in the world, may be on the verge of losing this system.

We have had close calls in the past. The Civil War threatened to cut this nation in two, but the election of Abraham Lincoln saved us. Even during that dreadful conflict, we held an election in the Union north and Lincoln was reelected to his second term.

The slave-owning Southe more...

Print

America?s Dilemma: Polarization

We are suffering from one of our nation?s recurring problems: polarization. Our very nation?s birth took place during a phase of polarization: those wanting independence from our British governors, those rejecting this independence (preferred the status quo), and those too ignorant to care.

In those days, our most educated sector opted for creating a new nation, one not ruled by the British king and country. They wanted self-rule, an opportunity for those steeped in the history more...

Print

Census Analysis (2 of 2)


In the 1990s, an alarmist but popular program was the need for zero population growth. Warnings were circulated that population growth was reaching disaster proportions, with the collapse of civilization imminent. This alarm was mostly ignored, especially in the lesser developed world, with many women having seven or more children. Civilization did not collapse, but overpopulation certainly did make the lives of many very unpleasant. Food crises were met quickly by the United Nations Foo more...

Print

Infrastructure (2 of 2))


The traditional notion of Infrastructure is physical: roads, bridges, tunnels, airports, and railroads. But our social infrastructure is just as essential. Social infrastructures are how we treat and support our population for best outcomes.

Modern developed societies around the world are judged by both physical and social infrastructures. Countries are deemed well run when they are clean, orderly, just, healthy, and citizens content with their governance. These elements r more...

Print

Can Biden Produce another "New Deal?"


Our country is designed to move slowly, a protection that our Founders envisioned to protect us from dictatorship or anarchy. Moving with deliberate care, however, is not the same as gridlock in which emergencies go untreated.

It took almost a century for the blight on our republic, slavery, to become so dire that it threatened to destroy us one country. A devastating civil war and the presidency of a remarkable leader, Abraham Lincoln, saved us and ended chattel slavery. more...

Print

The Future of Work (Part 2)

Economists and sociologists worry about the future of work. Robotics are replacing many human workers, endangering jobs in the future for people who had formerly enjoyed middle class status.

Toll takers on the San Francisco bridges are gone, replaced by cameras and iPads. Less visible were the changes in manufacturing (humans no longer needed for assembly lines) and mining. Despite former President Trump?s lie that he would revive dirty energy industries, most were already closin more...

Print

September 2020

Putin?s Own Problems


Last week, we discussed how Putin has manipulated President Trump to carry out Putin?s policy objectives. At some point, Trump?s financial records will be revealed, and we will probably learn what Trump is so panicked about revealing: the extent of his indebtedness to Russia. Putin has something, some incriminating data he is using to pull Trump?s strings. Money laundering may be one obvious issue.

But lest we despair that Putin?s gleeful smile when he and the pathetic Tru more...

Print

"Incredible," and "Unbelievable," Indeed.

Words are a funny thing; they sometimes morph from one meaning to its opposite over time, as we can see today. President Trump?s limited vocabulary favors "incredible" and "unbelievable" every time he means "wonderful." Knowing how untrue most of his utterances are, I always take his "unbelievable" and "Incredible" literally: "not believable" and "not credible."

Among things not believable and not credible are his promotion of conspiracy theories: that the Coronavirus was created more...

Print

December 2019

America?s Gift to the World


When everything that the US has done to create and support a global world order is being challenged, both here and abroad, it may benefit us to review exactly what we accomplished. Knowing this might help us restore it after the next election.

Political scientist Michael Mandelbaum published a book in 2005: The Case for Goliath: How America Acts as the World?s Government in the 21st Century. Mandelbaum claims that the US has functioned as a de facto world government from more...

Print

America?s Gift to the World


When everything that the US has done to create and support a global world order is being challenged, both here and abroad, it may benefit us to review exactly what we accomplished. Knowing this might help us restore it after the next election.

Political scientist Michael Mandelbaum published a book in 2005: The Case for Goliath: How America Acts as the World?s Government in the 21st Century. Mandelbaum claims that the US has functioned as a de facto world government from more...

Print

April 2019

Democracy Thrives on Centrists, Not Radicals (part 2).



Foreign Policy. Only 10% of voters care about foreign policy issues, until we are at war, when 20% start to care. Democrats often think that our values matter in foreign policy issues. Republicans more often consider pragmatism, and are more inclined to recognize that there is no "world order" other than in our imaginations.

We need a mix of these two views: never forgetting that values do matter, but knowing that nations don?t have "friends," they have "allies" o more...

Print

The Limits to Growth


The economic system that has done so well by us is Capitalism, a system that encourages competition and innovation, its excesses moderated by government regulations that protect the public from the abuses of the system?s earlier century. This delicate balancing act has depended on growth: population growth, productivity, and seemingly limitless innovation.

But now there is a problem for this system. Nothing in the biological world has unlimited growth. Things are born, li more...

Print

November 2018

What to Do About Saudi Arabia


Sometimes, one only misses something when it is gone. This is the case with America?s long-standing foreign policy, our policy of responsibility for global prosperity.

At the end of World War II, we were the only nation not devastated by that war. Shortly before our victory, the US convened a global conference of our allies and made an offer that couldn?t be refused. We wanted all of our allies to emancipate their colonies, just as we did with our one colony, the Philippi more...

Print

August 2018

Why is Foreign Policy So Complex?


Diplomacy is a very old tradition in the world. The world?s first kings 7,000 years ago (Sumeria in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Hrappa in today?s Punjab) exchanged letters and sent gifts to each other. Warfare then was only local, not international. In 300 AD, the Chinese and Persian emperors exchanged gifts, sponsored a trade route across Asia (Silk Route), and never went to war. Diplomacy in those days was peaceful communications between two great empires.

The rules governin more...

Print

Putin?s Game


History reflects trends and broad sweeps, but also the mark of powerful individuals. The US during the 1930s was divided among the very rich and the jobless or struggling poor; immigrant families trying to become American and demagogues who trashed them; Whites of all levels and Blacks who suffered wherever they were, particularly in the South where lynching was shamefully frequent; and Globalists and America-Firsters. Without the New Deal and the particular president we had then (Roosev more...

Print

Following Russian Money


Russia attempted to clandestinely manipulate our 2016 presidential election, a fact shared with the voters by President Obama and every FBI and CIA chief, active and former. We unmasked the hackers who muddied Hillary Clinton?s campaign and found the probes into the election machinery of a number of states. What we do not know yet is how many Americans cooperated, colluded, or sought Russian money and help. That question will be answered by the Mueller investigation in due time.
< more...

Print

Three Countries Turn 70: Comparisons


Seventy years ago, the United Nations recognized the birth of three new nations: Israel, India, and Pakistan. All three had just been given their independence from British colonialism: the Palestinian territory under British "mandate." India had been the "jewel in the crown" of the British Empire for 150 years. Pakistan was a brand-new country that was formerly north-eastern and north-western India. All three began their new lives with similarities and differences, the latter accounting more...

Print

Valentine's Day Has Religious Enemies


It is difficult to believe that a holiday as seemingly benign as St. Valentine's Day could arouse hatred, but it does. This dubious but nice Catholic holiday commemorates an early saint who provided dowry money to deserving but poor girls. But when romantic love (choosing one's spouse) became the norm in the 18th century Western world, this holiday morphed into one of courtship. Young people sent sweet and often anonymous messages or cards to the object of their affection. This practice more...

Print

September 2014

Conflicting Views of the President's Foreign Policy



Journalists often gang up on our presidents. Dwight Eisenhower was dismissed as an inarticulate golf-playing do-nothing by the political elites of his time. In reality, he adeptly handled the earlier years of the Cold War and set forth policies that saw us through a half century. Lyndon Johnson saddled himself with the Vietnam War and was reviled by journalists, academics, and the young, leaving office as a failure. Today, we realize what an astonishing president he was: an unlik more...

Print

July 2013

Egypt’s Problems Go Beyond Morsi.


With all the hand wringing about Egypt’s army abruptly removing an elected president, more serious problems are not getting much attention.

The US had hoped that supporting the (unwelcome) outcome of an election would encourage the Muslim Brotherhood to learn how to govern. However, the Muslim Brotherhood abhors everything that liberal democracy values and they had resurrected the fear of “one man, one vote, one time.”

We Americans often assume that an more...

Print

September 2012

The Fog of War is Nothing to the Fog of the Muslim World.

The Arab Spring came and quickly left, followed by what we call “young democracies,” the results of “elections.” Why did we think that these elections would produce the modern, western values of tolerant and participatory governance? In every political revolution, intellectuals do the first heavy lifting, only to be replaced (and killed) by something akin to totalitarianism. Every revolution “eats its children,” and this was so in Iran, Egypt, Yemen, and Libya, and will be when the o more...

Print

Egypt Has Post-Election Blues.


A few weeks ago, I attended a lecture on Egypt’s “Arab Spring” and their recent round of elections. The speaker was optimistic about this process, and noted a number of “accomplishments” that Egyptians should regard with pride:

• A tyrannical dictator removed
• A relatively free and fair election held
• A member of the Muslim Brotherhood elected (Accomplishment?)
• The military promise to yield to civilian rule
• Treaty more...

Print

More Electoral Fraud in Egypt? What a Surprise.


In our enthusiasm for the Arab Spring and its promise of democracy, we now watch elections and parliaments in Egypt and Tunisia with some concern. How did we get so much wrong?

First, we never talked about “liberal” democracy, the system used in the West that provides checks and balances and protects against abuse of power. We just talked about elections, and they have indeed had those.

All Egyptian players have a stake in the outcome. The military esta more...

Print

Time to Revisit the Abused “L” Word, “L” for “Liberal.”


The term “liberal” has become a very bad word in some circles. Many conservatives today do not see Liberal as just another political viewpoint, but as an evil philosophy. Simultaneously, many who call themselves “liberal” today seem to have forgotten what liberal really means. We all need to revisit this important concept.

“Liberal” derives from the mid-19th century concern with “liberty.” The British liberals stood for freeing much the economy from govern more...

Print

Religious Intolerance is the World's Normal. Can it Be Fixed?



The West has brought an amazing baby into the world: religious tolerance. The lesser developed world is still enmeshed in the ancient notion that there is only one religion and that all others must be not only avoided, but wiped out if possible. Religious fanaticism is an ancient human horror.

Tolerance does not necessarily mean love, but means that we can live and let live) with people who worship differently (within limits) or are female or homosexual. This to more...

Print

October 2011

How Goes It With Marriage Around the World?(Part 1)


This is a two-part series on how women are faring worldwide. Marriage is part I, and four other major concerns are part 2, next week.

Americans are great romantics about marriage. In the traditional past, women were property and were disposed of in marriage as best suited their relatives and clans. But in the past 400 years, Europeans (and American colonists) began to accept a young couple marrying out of mutual affection. Of course, we are talking about people with some f more...

Print

May 2011

Iran, Like Some Here, Also Believes In Apocalyptic Myths.


We live in a time of strange beliefs. The latest comes from Iran. Although a country with skyscrapers, metro subways, and nuclear aspirations, their leaders believe in sorcery. The conflict between obnoxious President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the “Supreme Leader” Ayatollah Khamenei has now produced a spate of arrests; 25 people, associated with Ahmadinejad's Chief of Staff, Mashaei, have been accused of being “magicians who evoke djinns” (evil spirits)-yes, like the ones who come more...

Print

March 2010

Greece is in the Grip of Denial.


Greece is on the verge of bankruptcy and the rest of the European Union is much alarmed. The very currency of the EU, the Euro, is endangered by this and Germany, an economic giant in Europe, may have to bail Greece out to prevent a cascade of disasters.

Not only is Greece is in trouble, but so are Portugal, Spain, and Italy. Suddenly, all of the optimistic predictions about the European community overtaking us and making the Euro replace the dollar as the world’s major more...

Print

Why Do Small Businesses Get So Little Respect?


A reader responding to my recent column on poisonous ideologies (Fascism, Communism, and Militant Islam) asked why I didn’t include capitalism. My response was that capitalism has raised more people out of poverty than any ideology ever, and does not depend upon brainwashing. I suggested he read Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic, which traced the evolution of American capitalism. This ethic was the first ideology to validate work—that work is not an evil, but is a good thing—both more...

Print