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America

The Municipal War Against…Vegetable Gardens

In America, and places beyond, homeowners’ vegetable gardens have become a target of municipal officials. They’re beautiful, offer fresh food, conserve water, and are peaceful uses of homeowners’ private property: yet for it all, vegetable gardens still offend officials’ laughable sense of what’s appropriate. That appropriateness in this case is little more than a dull…

Happy Independence Day

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776. The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which…

An American Milestone: SpaceX’s Private Dragon Capsule Docks with International Space Station

Those who contend that America’s best days are behind her couldn’t be more wrong: Here’s video of the privately-created SpaceX Dragon supply capsule docking with the International Space Station. There are no crew inside the capsule, and the docking is automated. Many peoples cannot yet design and launch automated capsules like this, and America has…

The Ride

Phil Keoghan’s 2011 documentary, The Ride, is about a charity bike ride across America to benefit the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. I saw the film this weekend on Showtime, and it was interesting from first to last. It was more than interesting – it was inspiring. Along the way, Keoghan and his comrades meet thousands…

Chrysler’s Clint Eastwood Commercial, It’s Halftime, America

I held this commercial from the preceding post of my other favorites, because it’s both longer and different: its political themes separate it from a conventional commercial, even a conventional Super Bowl commercial (if there should be such a thing). There’s an optimism in this commercial that is, I think, justified: despite the most difficult…

Underestimating America’s Influence: Why America’s Not in Decline

There’s been much talk, from generation to generation about the rise of the next global power to supplant America.  The Soviet Union (yes, for many, this once seemed certain), Japan,  and now China:  in each instance, an insistence that America is in decline.  (For a post that addresses myths about China, see Overestimating China’s influence: ‘Five myths about China’s power’.) At the New Republic,…

Ian Bremmer on why it’s ‘Far too soon to write off America’

Indeed, it is far too soon. America’s best days are yet ahead. Chinese officials who dream of their own dominance will be as disappointed as Japanese bureaucrats who dreamt the same scenario a generation ago. The world belongs neither to the selfish ambitions of those Japanese corporatist s nor to those of contemporary Chinese statists.…