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"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  

August 2023

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...

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Ukraine Reborn (1 of 2)

A psychological exercise is to look out at an audience from a balcony and ask: How many red hats do you see? Until you pay specific attention, you don?t know. Once asked, all the red hats pop out at you. Thinking about Ukraine is the same sort of thing. Most Americans couldn?t tell you where it is, but that is changing now. We have Ukraine on the brain.

I should say that I have it on the brain. It has been there all along without my being aware of it. I used to think of it as THE more...

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March 2022

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...

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January 2021

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...

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March 2020

Rolling Back Regulations

We regularly hear about President Trump?s latest "rollbacks" to regulations, the primary excuse being that regulations, particularly Obama ones, "overreached." The real reason, it appears, is that President Trump cannot bear comparisons between Obama?s presidency and his. But he sometimes has other motives. As Nancy Pelosi warned, "in the Trump White House, all roads lead to Putin."

Early in Trump?s presidency, I recall his amazing comment about asbestos, and his scorn for regulat more...

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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...

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October 2010

“The Sky Is Falling” Is Alive and Well—Again.


We are already past the millennium year 2000 (or was it actually 2001 that began the century) and the sky didn’t fall. Now what? Are we ready to recognize the new millennium as the beginning of something or will we still cling to knee-jerk pessimism?

In the year 1000, Europe panicked about the “end of times” that would probably cast them all into hellfire and damnation. The year 1,000 came and went, but the skies never opened. With a little ingenuity, the forecast more...

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