Archive: Sep 2009

From Harper’s: Mark Slouka on the Humanities From the September 2009 issue. Mark Slouka is a contributing editor of Harper’s Magazine. His novel The Visible World is available in paperback…

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A couple of weeks ago, I met with Ahmed Rashid in Madrid and heard his verdict about the rigging of Afghanistan’s presidential elections. Nevertheless, Rashid managed to be upbeat about…

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The position of Carl Gustav Jung in the intellectual history of the twentieth century remains sharply disputed. He introduced the concept of the archetype and developed a school of psychiatry…

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Luke Mogelson contributed reporting for this interview. Peter Maass, a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine, is the author of Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil, which…

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Rick Stengel’s makeover of Time magazine continues apace this week with a cover salute to Fox News’s emerging superstar, Glenn Beck. Even in the days of Henry Luce, Time had…

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Merk Dir: jeder Schritt im Leben ? ist ein tiefrer. Worte! Worte! ? Merk Dir nichts als dies, Tarquinius: ? wer nicht wahr ist, wirft sich weg! ? . .…

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Und nun gedenken wir auch die Größe unserer Verpflichtung gegen die Vergangenheit als geistiges Continuum, welches mit zu unserem höchsten geistigen Besitz gehört. Alles was im Entferntesten zu dieser Kunde…

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The dean of Washington’s national security reporters, Walter Pincus, wrote a column back on September 1 in which he described the case of a former Army lieutenant colonel who brandished…

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The Referendum is a phenomenon typical of (but not limited to) midlife, whereby people, increasingly aware of the finiteness of their time in the world, the limitations placed on them…

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Defenders of former president George W. Bush now focus their efforts on claims that he enhanced the nation’s security. There aren’t many objective metrics for assessing security, but there’s only…

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From ProPublica: Last spring, the U.S. diplomatic mission in Iraq got a makeover, replacing the scandal-plagued Blackwater private security company with a firm named Triple Canopy. The new $1 billion…

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I’ve always admired the work of ACORN and thought right-wing attacks on the group bordered on the hysterical, but that was a terrific undercover sting mounted by the two young…

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Over the course of this summer, those two failed systems have collided in a spectacular crossroads moment in American history. We have an urgent national emergency on the one hand,…

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Republican commentator and former presidential speechwriter David Frum has offered the most serious and most introspective take on the destructive role played by the twin talking heads who now become…

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Although coverage of the Gaza War of December 2008-January 2009 was dominated by spin at the time, the conclusion that serious violations of the laws of war occurred can no…

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Few people in recent years have made better use of being a retired Supreme Court justice than Sandra Day O’Connor. Her recent appearance at a conference in Seattle contained some…

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John R. MacArthur is publisher of Harper’s Magazine and author of the book You Can’t Be President: The Outrageous Barriers to Democracy in America. This column originally appeared in the…

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Writing at Salon, Alexander Zaitchik offers us an introduction to the world of Mormon fundamentalist Cleon Skousen, the man who Glenn Beck says changed his life and whose book, The…

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After finally getting the speech draft turned around and sent back to the teleprompter technicians, we trudged back to the Family Theater, where [President George W. Bush] rehearsed. In the…

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The cover story for the October Atlantic is an open letter from Andrew Sullivan to former President Bush. The subject is torture. Sullivan appeals to Bush to end his silence…

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Max Blumenthal launched his journalistic career with an award-winning exposé of the deaths of hundreds of young women in the Mexican border city of Juárez. More recently, he has specialized…

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In remarks delivered on Monday at the nation’s first capitol, New York’s Federal Hall, President Obama marked the first anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers—an event that launched the…

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The pace of human evolution has been increasing at a stunning rate since our ancestors began spreading through Europe, Asia and Africa 40,000 years ago, quickening to 100 times historical…

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Back in 1856, South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks took offense to an anti-slavery speech delivered by Massachusetts abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner. Accompanied by another congressman from the Palmetto state, Laurence…

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From Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington’s new report on the most corrupt members of congress: Rep. Young’s ethics violations stem from the misuse of his position to benefit…

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From the Los Angeles Times: The American Medical Assn., after 60 years of opposing any government overhaul of healthcare, is now lobbying and advertising to win public support for President…

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A Christian martyr. President Barack Obama addressed a joint session of Congress and implored Democrats to pass their own health-care legislation. During the speech, the president noted that the bill…

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