Roundup: Media's Take

Toshio Nishi: The New Japanese Nationalism

Toshio Nishi is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. Japan has been apologizing since the summer of 1945; apologizing to its neighbors in the Asia-Pacific and to the United States. Have we, the Japanese, been kowtowing to the point that no nation believes our sincerity? Or do the Asia-Pacific nations demand more of our prostration? The scene is perhaps like an addict needing a more potent drug every passing day: the drug being Japan’s apology, and the addict you could easily guess. Don’t the Japanese get sick and tired of our same miserable behavior? Yes, we do. Indeed, a proverbial swing has moved a little toward the center, and Japan has become assertive and recently proclaimed ownership for some little rocks sticking out of the water in the Sea of Japan. China and South Korea are shocked to see Japan’s unexpected nationalistic, neo-militaristic resurgence. The United States wisely stays out of this potentially volatile shouting match. There is a very good reason for unfriendly bickering. Below the rocks, under the seabed, huge oil and natural gas deposits have been discovered. MacArthur’s Legacy Something is going on under the surface of a polite Japanese society that previously enjoyed unprecedented wealth and now is suffering from two decades of recession (but is still without much crime).

Thomas Sowell: ‘Forward’ to the Past? In its Search for Economic Equality, the Left Ignores History

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. The political slogan "Forward" served Barack Obama well during this year’s election campaign. It said that he was for going forward, while Republicans were for "going back to the failed policies that got us into this mess in the first place." It was great political rhetoric and great political theater. Moreover, the Republicans did virtually nothing to challenge its shaky assumptions, though a few hard facts could have made those assumptions collapse like a house of cards. More is involved than this year’s political battles. The word "forward" has been a political battle cry on the left for more than a century. It has been almost as widely used as the Left’s other favorite word, "equality," which goes back more than two centuries. The seductive notion of economic equality has appealed to many people. The pilgrims started out with the idea of equal sharing. The colony of Georgia began with very similar ideas. In the Midwest, Britain’s Robert Owen — who coined the term "socialism" — set up colonies based on communal living and economic equality. What these idealistic experiments all had in common was that they failed...

Brent Budowsky: The NRA and the USA

Budowsky was an aide to former Sen. Lloyd Bentsen and Bill Alexander, then chief deputy majority whip of the House. He holds an LL.M. degree in international financial law from the London School of Economics. He can be read on The Hill’s Pundits Blog and reached at brentbbi@webtv.net.Let’s do this for the beautiful girls and boys of Newtown, whose happy smiles, wide eyes, caring hearts, and loving souls will never again warmly hug the families that love them or joyously open the presents that await them, as the nation that mourns them and loves them begins heartfelt thought and prayerful reflection during this holiday season.Regarding the role of the National Rifle Association in a nation that has witnessed far too many killings of far too many innocents in a nation with far too many of the kind of weapons that are best left to Navy SEALs killing enemy terrorists, I write today to reach out.A great political battle might be necessary, but a national consensus for unity and action would be far preferable. Not one child will be saved by renewing ancient political wars that inevitably lead to inaction that history will condemn as another appalling prelude to the next mass murder....

Nabila Ramdani: French-Algerians are Still Second-class Citizens

Nabila Ramdani is a Paris-born freelance journalist and academic of Algerian descent. She specialises in Anglo-French issues, Islamic affairs, and the Arab World. It is now half a century since Algeria, the jewel in the crown of Gallic imperialism, was finally granted independence, so ending 132 years of often barbarous rule from Paris that culminated in a war in which more than a million Algerians died. This week the French president, François Hollande, is on a two-day state visit to the country. His main task is effectively to offer a qualified apology for what happened, and thus "turn a page" in arguably the darkest chapter in France's recent history. Moreover, Hollande will use the platitudinous jargon of modern global government to make the case for increased economic integration between the two countries, highlighting France's continuing friendship with her oil- and gas-rich North African partner. Apologies and clean slates are to be welcomed in any language. Bitterness over a uniquely savage history achieves nothing in terms of economic policy.

Jeffrey Sachs: Today’s Challenges Go Beyond Keynes

The writer is director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. For more than 30 years, from the mid-1970s to 2008, Keynesian demand management was in intellectual eclipse. Yet it returned with the financial crisis to dominate the thinking of the Obama administration and much of the UK Labour party. It is time to reconsider the revival. The rebound of Keynesianism, led in the US by Lawrence Summers, the former Treasury secretary, Paul Krugman, the economist-columnist, and the US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, came with the belief that short-term fiscal and monetary expansion was needed to offset the collapse of the housing market. The US policy choice has been four years of structural (cyclically adjusted) budget deficits of general government of 7 per cent of gross domestic product or more; interest rates near zero; another call by the White House for stimulus in 2013; and the Fed’s new policy to keep rates near zero until unemployment returns to 6.5 per cent.

Adam Winkler: Franklin Roosevelt ... The Father of Gun Control

Adam Winkler is a professor at UCLA School of Law and the author of Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America. Gun control is one of the great pieces of unfinished business for the Democratic Party. Although the party has never been unified in its support of restrictive gun laws – indeed, gun control historically transcends the usual party lines – for the past century Democrats have pushed for a more vigorous role for government in regulating guns. They’ve been largely unsuccessful, however, and lately Democrats have made Avoid Gun Control an informal plank in the party’s platform. The Newtown massacre however may have changed all that. Like health care, social security, and so many other issues central to the Democratic agenda, the party’s support for gun control stems from Franklin D. Roosevelt. For most of American history, regulation of guns was a matter of state law.

Paul R. Pillar: Opposing Apartheid, Then and Now

Paul R. Pillar is director of graduate studies at Georgetown University's Security Studies Program and a former national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia. Several factors contributed to the demise of apartheid in the land where that term originated, South Africa. Inspired and timely leadership within South Africa was an important ingredient. But international agitation and pressure, based on a widespread sense of moral outrage, undoubtedly were also critical. The international response included unofficial boycotts and official sanctions, with great and lesser powers alike contributing. International opposition to the most conspicuous current example of apartheid—Israeli subjugation of Palestinian Arabs—is not nearly as ubiquitous as opposition to the South African variety had become near its end in the early 1990s. But there are signs that it is growing. Organized efforts are aimed at boycotting products from settlements Israel has built in occupied territory in the West Bank.

Peter Beinart: Chuck Hagel ... The New Eisenhower

Peter Beinart, editor of OpenZion.com at the Daily Beast, is author of The Crisis of Zionism. In signaling that he’s likely to select Chuck Hagel as his secretary of defense, Barack Obama is sending a message about his second term. In the decade since 9/11, the spirit of Harry Truman has dominated American foreign policy. Now it may be giving way to the spirit of Dwight Eisenhower. And that could make all the difference in the world. Truman’s foreign policy was grand. In March 1947, in his speech to Congress requesting aid to Greece and Turkey, and then, more comprehensively, in a secret 1950 strategy paper entitled NSC 68, Truman committed the United States to containing communism everywhere on earth. It was a stirring cause, and hubristic beyond words.

Joseph A. Califano Jr.: Gun Control Lessons from LBJ

Joseph A. Califano Jr. was President Lyndon B. Johnson’s top assistant for domestic policy. He was secretary of health, education, and welfare in the Carter administration and is Founder and Chair Emeritus of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University.Ifever there were a moment for President Obama to learn from history, it is now, in the wake of Friday’s shootings at the elementary school at Newtown, Conn. The timely lesson for Obama, drawn from the experience of Lyndon B. Johnson — the last president to aggressively fight for comprehensive gun control — is this: Demand action on comprehensive gun control immediately from this Congress or lose the opportunity during your presidency.

John S. Dickerson: The Decline of Evangelical America

John S. Dickerson is the senior pastor of Cornerstone Church and author of the forthcoming book “The Great Evangelical Recession: Six Factors That Will Crash the American Church ... and How to Prepare.”...I found that the structural supports of evangelicalism are quivering as a result of ground-shaking changes in American culture. Strategies that served evangelicals well just 15 years ago are now self- destructive. The more that evangelicals attempt to correct course, the more they splinter their movement. In coming years we will see the old evangelicalism whimper and wane.

Jeffrey Gettleman: Congo's Never-Ending War

Jeffrey Gettleman is the East Africa bureau chief for The New York Times.LAST month, as I was driving down a backbreaking road between Goma, a provincial capital in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Kibumba, a little market town about 20 miles away, I came upon the body of a Congolese soldier. He was on his back, half hidden in the bushes, his legs crumpled beneath him, his fly-covered face looking up at the sun.

Paul Brandus: Ronald Reagan Would Demand More Gun Control

Paul Brandus is an award-winning member of the White House press corps who founded West Wing Report in 2009. Follow him on Twitter: @WestWingReport....Republicans, at least some of them, used to have the courage and honesty to speak out against assault weapons. The most prominent example, ironically, is the one man today's GOP claims to revere above all: Ronald Reagan.

Joseph A. Califano: Gun Control Lessons from Lyndon Johnson

Joseph A. Califano Jr. was President Lyndon B. Johnson’s top assistant for domestic policy. He was secretary of health, education, and welfare in the Carter administration and is Founder and Chair Emeritus of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University. Ifever there were a moment for President Obama to learn from history, it is now, in the wake of Friday’s shootings at the elementary school at Newtown, Conn. The timely lesson for Obama, drawn from the experience of Lyndon B. Johnson — the last president to aggressively fight for comprehensive gun control — is this: Demand action on comprehensive gun control immediately from this Congress or lose the opportunity during your presidency. In the aftermath of the assassination of Robert F.

Peter Berkowitz: Conservative Survival in a Progressive Age

Mr. Berkowitz, a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, is the author of "Constitutional Conservatism: Liberty, Self-Government and Political Moderation," forthcoming from the Hoover Institution Press in February. This op-ed is adapted from the book's conclusion.Political moderation is a maligned virtue. Yet it has been central to American constitutionalism and modern conservatism. Such moderation is essential today to the renewal of a conservatism devoted to the principles of liberty inscribed in the Constitution—and around which both social conservatives and libertarians can rally."It is a misfortune, inseparable from human affairs, that public measures are rarely investigated with that spirit of moderation which is essential to a just estimate of their real tendency to advance or obstruct the public good," observed James Madison in Federalist No. 37. The challenge, Madison went on to explain, is more sobering still because the spirit of moderation "is more apt to be diminished than promoted by those occasions which require an unusual exercise of it."

Sarah Carr: In Southern Towns, 'Segregation Academies' Are Still Going Strong

Sarah Carr is a contributing editor at The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, nonpartisan education-news outlet based at Teachers College, Columbia University, and author of the forthcoming book Hope Against Hope. It took LaToysha Brown 13 years to realize how little interaction she had with white peers in her Mississippi Delta town: not at church, not at school, not at anywhere.The realization dawned when she was in the seventh grade, studying the civil rights movement at an after-school program called the Sunflower County Freedom Project. It didn't bother her at first. By high school, however, Brown had started to wonder if separate could ever be equal. She attended a nearly all-black high school with dangerous sinkholes in the courtyard, spotty Internet access in the classrooms, and a shortage of textbooks all around. Brown had never been inside Indianola Academy, the private school most of the town's white teenagers attend. But she sensed that the students there had books they could take home and walkways free of sinkholes."The schools would achieve so much more if they would combine," said Brown, now age 17 and a junior.

Ricky Kreitner: 'Lincoln,' Thaddeus Stevens and Why American Politics Still Needs Radicals

Ricky Kreitner is an editorial intern for The Nation. Write to him at richard.kreitner@gmail.com.The most politically radical character in Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln is also, not accidentally, the most entertaining. A reliable source of comic relief in a film weighed down with false notes of levity, Thaddeus Stevens (played expertly and judiciously by Tommy Lee Jones) is an unrepentantly radical congressman from Pennsylvania whose fierce commitment to racial equality is surpassed only by his commitment to rhetorically eviscerating those with a different opinion. “You fatuous nincompoop,” he roars at one pro-slavery Democrat. “You insult God!”In some ways, Lincoln portrays Stevens as a man of great personal integrity and admirable core principles. He is, of course, the only character—the titular hero included—in a film about the political battle to pass the Thirteenth Amendment who comes close to advocating the modern consensus opinion on civil rights. And by depicting Stevens’s open-secret relationship with Lydia Hamilton Smith, his black housekeeper—friends referred to her, without derision, as “Mrs. Stevens”—the film accurately presents the congressman’s views on slavery and civil rights as the product of a lifelong crusade, one less political than personal.

Nikolas K. Gvosdev: How the GOP Lost National Security

Nikolas K. Gvosdev, a senior editor at The National Interest, is a professor of national-security studies at the U.S. Naval War College. In the wake of the 2012 election, it is clear that there has been a sea change in the perceptions of the American electorate on which party is the better steward of the country’s national-security interests. Traditionally, Republican candidates had always enjoyed a so-called "national-security advantage" (at least in those elections where foreign and defense policies were major issues). Only a short eight years ago, George W. Bush enjoyed a eighteen-point lead over John Kerry when exit polls asked voters to rate who they trusted to wage the "war on terror" more effectively, and of those voters who made national security a voting issue, sixty percent favored the Republican incumbent. No longer. The November 2012 Rasmussen report now gives Democrats the edge when the question is posed as to which party is better equipped to deal with national security.

Stefano Casertano: The Age of Islamic Dictators

Stefano Casertano is an international politics expert, author and journalist residing in Berlin, with a focus on global economics and energy affairs. The only reason why Egypt’s President Mohamed Morsi did not stick with his super-presidential decree has been the presence of the military. In November, Morsi sought to seize near-absolute power for himself, claiming that this was required to "complete the revolutionary process." The proposed decree stated that a presidential action was exempt from oversight or scrutiny by other institutions, like the judiciary. Egyptian secularists decried the move as a tactical maneuver to introduce a full-fledged Islamist constitution, or as a way for Morsi to secure his position by use of dictatorial power. The secular (and Coptic Christian) opposition gathered in Tahrir Square to call for the revoking of the "super powers." Clashes between secularists and Morsi’s supporters soon broke out. The military reacted by asserting that "they did not want to intervene in a political matter between opposed factions." Yet two things became clear very soon: first, the military is still the only force capable of guaranteeing order. As Rami G.

Michael Lind: The Third Great Economic Collapse

Michael Lind is the author of Land of Promise: an Economic History of the United States and a columnist for Salon. More than half a decade has passed since the recession that triggered the financial panic and the Great Recession, but the condition of the world continues to be summed up by what I’ve called ‘turboparalysis’ — a prolonged condition of furious motion without movement in any particular direction, a situation in which the engine roars and the wheels spin but the vehicle refuses to move. The greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression might have been expected to produce revolutions in politics and the world of ideas alike. Outside of the Arab world, however, revolutions are hard to find. Mass unemployment and austerity policies have caused riots in Greece and Spain, but most developed nations are remarkably sedate. Scandal and sputtering economic growth appear unlikely to prevent another peaceful transition of power within the Communist party of China. And in the US, the re-election of President Obama and the strengthening of his Democratic party in the US Senate reflect long-term demographic changes in an increasingly non-white and secular American electorate, not the endorsement of a bold agenda for the future by the Democrats. They don’t have one. In the realm of ideas, turboparalysis is even more striking.

Mohamed Gadala: Egypt ... On the Path to Nazism

The writer is an Egyptian citizen. His name has been changed to protect his identity. The political atmosphere in Egypt today closely resembles that experienced in Germany 1933 after the accession to power of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party in an equally narrow democratic electoral victory.Both Hitler and ex-inmate Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi show the same desire for revenge against the established social order and intolerance toward adversaries. During the past six months Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood have taken all necessary measures to consolidate his grasp on power, matching similar measures taken by Hitler in 1933 including controlling all media, the army, local municipalities, police force and jurisdictional institutions, appointing allies to key positions while viciously removing technocrats and bureaucratic employees who do not show complete obedience.Accusations of corruption and loyalty to the old regime (of Honsi Mubarak) are readily used whenever the Brotherhood wishes to assert control, in an intense purging campaign.