Roundup: Media's Take

Robert Samuelson: Why Our Children's Future No Longer Looks so Bright

Robert Samuelson writes a weekly economics column that usually runs in The Post on MondaysA specter haunts America: downward mobility. Every generation, we believe, should live better than its predecessor. By and large, Americans still embrace that promise. A Pew survey earlier this year found that 48 percent of respondents felt that their children’s living standards would exceed their own. Although that’s down from 61 percent in 2002, it’s on a par with the mid-1990s. But these expectations could be dashed. For young Americans, the future could be dimmer.

James Shapiro: Hollywood Dishonors the Bard

James Shapiro, a professor of English at Columbia, is the author of “Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?”ROLAND EMMERICH’S film “Anonymous,” which opens next week, “presents a compelling portrait of Edward de Vere as the true author of Shakespeare’s plays.” That’s according to the lesson plans that Sony Pictures has been distributing to literature and history teachers in the hope of convincing students that Shakespeare was a fraud. A documentary by First Folio Pictures (of which Mr. Emmerich is president) will also be part of this campaign.So much for “Hey, it’s just a movie!”

Steve Kornacki: Why Mitt Romney is No Nelson Rockefeller

Steve Kornacki is Salon's news editor....Comparisons between the 2012 and 1964 GOP races completely miss the mark, and treating the current contest as a repeat of Goldwater vs. Rockefeller is a poor way to understand the evolution of the Republican Party since the 1960s and how Romney fits into it today.The most important thing to realize about the Nelson Rockefeller who ran for president in 1964 is that he was an authentic political liberal, a believer in the power of government to fix the nation’s biggest problems, and he made essentially no effort to hide it. He favored strong civil rights laws, expansive anti-poverty programs, and major investments in education, healthcare and conservation. And the most important thing to realize about the Republican Party of 1964 is that to many of its leaders and rank-and-file members there was nothing at all alarming about Rockefeller’s liberalism. It was common in a party that was littered with Northeast moderates and liberals and light on conservative white southerners....

Paul Campos: Occupy Wall Street: Why Baby Boomers Don't Understand the Protests

Paul Campos is a professor of law at the University of Colorado at Boulder. I am a baby boomer. Like many people my age, I have a high-paying and generally pleasant job, which features excellent benefits and a flexible work schedule. I’m also one of those people who, not long ago, would have dismissed the Occupy Wall Street protesters as just another bunch of spoiled kids, indulging in political street theater, while lacking any serious and constructive agenda. (Those people seem to include almost all of the mainstream media, which until a few days ago limited their coverage of the protesters to mocking their clothes and music. Predictably, time has transformed many boomers into their own parents.)I am, in other words, part of what could be called the Clueless Generation. The Clueless Generation is made up of middle-aged, professionally successful people, who grew up in a nation that featured a mostly thriving economy, low-cost higher education, and some minimal commitment to economic justice. As a consequence, we graduated from school with little or no debt, got good jobs that featured real possibilities for advancement, and have on the whole ended up doing very well for ourselves.

Peter Beinart: Occupy Protests’ Seismic Effect

Peter Beinart, senior political writer for The Daily Beast, is associate professor of journalism and political science at City University of New York and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. His latest book is The Icarus Syndrome: A History of American Hubris. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.This past weekend, in 900 cities across the world, tens of thousands demonstrated against unregulated capitalism. Something fascinating is growing, and by the time it ends, I suspect, politics will be different in the United States and a lot of other places as well.

Ashot Egiazaryan: Can Russia Ever Change?

Mr. Egiazaryan is a member of Russia's outgoing State Duma and is currently living in the United States out of fear for his personal safety. Vladimir Putin's decision to return to the Kremlin for a third term shows that, 20 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia remains unable to transform its political model. Russia retains a heavily centralized, highly inefficient state with weak institutions that do not represent the people. Property is still largely owned and controlled by government officials, civil society remains underdeveloped and consciousness of civic responsibility weak at best. By historical standards, today's authoritarian system in Russia is of the soft variety: The apparatus of repression is only used selectively and there are pockets of freedom, notably on the Internet, that the authorities choose not to control. Russians today also enjoy unprecedented freedom of travel. Yet the much vaunted "stability" associated with Mr. Putin's rule is threatened by a lack of civic participation. I'd estimate that roughly 20% of Russian society is progressively minded and capable of driving change. But this vital faction is largely apathetic and sees no prospect of fundamental reform. Marginalized by heavily managed state media and farcical elections, their energies are going to waste.

Frank Ching: China Abuses History in Sea Claims

Frank Ching opened The Wall Street Journal’s Bureau in China in 1979. Now based in Hong Kong, he writes a weekly column on Chinese affairs. US scholar Lucian Pye once famously said that China was not a country but ‘a civilization pretending to be a state.’ That may have been apt at one time, but today’s China has been transformed into a modern state that plays an active role in international forums. However, China also tries to capitalize on its long history when pressing its case in international disputes. Nowhere is this more clear than in the current South China Sea territorial dispute, which pits China against several of its neighbours. Also embroiled in the various rows are the United States, India and, increasingly, Japan.

Joe Nocera: The 1930s Sure Sound Familiar

Not long ago, someone suggested that I read “Since Yesterday,” a book by Frederick Lewis Allen, a popular historian of the 1930s and 1940s. Published in 1940, it turned out to be a shrewd, concise, wonderfully written account of America in the ’30s.It also turned out to be something else: a reminder of why history matters. It is impossible to read “Since Yesterday” without reflecting, again and again, on the parallels between then and now. The Great Depression, of course, dominates the book — and is far worse than anything we’ve been through. Still, when Allen writes about Ivar Kreuger, the industrialist who built an empire that some considered a Ponzi scheme, you instantly think of Bernie Madoff. The country’s fixation with the Lindbergh kidnapping seems strikingly similar to the country’s fixation with Casey Anthony....

Scott McLemee: Welcome to the Occupation

Scott McLemee writes for InsideHigherEd.“Bill O’Reilly has connected the dots to identify me as being behind the occupation,” said Frances Fox Piven. “I’m sorry to say that’s not true.”We were talking, by phone, about the continuing protest on Wall Street -- what it meant, how it was developing, and where things might go next. Piven, a professor of sociology and political science at the City University of New York Graduate Center, had gone downtown to join the protests a couple of times. Now in its fourth week and endorsed by several unions (most recently, the Communication Workers of America), Occupy Wall Street (OWS) has spun off hundreds of similar demonstrations around the country, including one outside the Federal Reserve building in Chicago....Other scholars I’ve contacted discuss the Occupy Wall Street movement as analysts, not advocates. They’ve been spared Piven’s drama. But insofar as they consider OWS to be a response to actual economic and social problems -- rather than the work of dirty hippies and commie sympathizers -- they may yet risk serving as fodder for somebody’s boosted Nielsen ratings.

Axel Caballero: Alabama Brings Back Slavery for Latinos

Axel Caballero is the founder and a producer of Cuéntame, a non-profit campaigning media organisation for the Latino community. Axel is also part of the Brave New Films and Brave New Foundation team, publishes Cuéntame Central and runs the Spanish-language blog MetaforaPolitica.comSeveral days have now passed since Alabama's anti-immigration law, the harshest and most abusive in the nation, came into full effect. HB 56, a de facto criminalisation of migration, replaces any sensible immigration policy with the favorite solution these days: let's put them behind bars– and we might as well make a profit out of it.

Brayden King: History is on the Occupiers’ Side

King is an assistant professor at the Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.The Occupy Wall Street protests began like many movements — a small group of committed activists decided to stage a rally and express their frustrations with the political system. At first sight, most politicians would have ignored the Occupiers as just another demonstration led by a few dozen college students. But unlike most protests, the Occupy movement has grown massively in a short period of time, spilling over into dozens of U.S. cities, drawing support from activists of all ages, and capturing the nation’s attention.The movement’s momentum continues to grow. Suddenly, the movement demands to be taken seriously. The Occupiers have infused the liberal grassroots sphere with vibrancy in the same way that the Tea Party rejuvenated conservative activists in 2009. But will the Occupy movement transform liberal politics? Will they shape Democrats’ policy agenda as the Tea Partyers influenced the Republicans?The time is ripe for the Occupy movement to have an impact on political and social reform. Scholars have identified a number of factors associated with the transformative potential of social movements, all of which seem to be on the side of the Occupiers....

Simon Jenkins: Only England Fails to Foresee the Demise of its First Empire

Simon Jenkins is a journalist and author.  Federations collapse from the stupidity of their leaders rather than the bolshevism of their members. The United Kingdom is no exception. It was pieced together in the 18th century from the half of the British Isles that the Normans had failed to conquer and assimilate. It began to disintegrate when the Irish had had enough of inept English government. Now the Scots are reaching the same conclusion, and up to a point the Welsh. The SNP's Alex Salmond indicated in the Guardian this week that he wants a dramatic new autonomy for Scotland: far more than the coalition's modest fiscal reform now before parliament, which offers some discretion on income tax and the retention of stamp duty.

Con Coughlin: Islam's War on the Cross

Con Coughlin, the Telegraph's executive foreign editor, is a world-renowned expert on the Middle East and Islamic terrorism. In the 19 or so centuries since Christianity first took root in Egypt, the ritual of mourning has become an all-too-familiar experience for the majority of the country’s Coptic community. Egypt’s eight million Copts may claim to be their nation’s oldest surviving indigenous faith, but that has not spared them from prolonged periods of persecution, most recently at the hands of Islamist militants. In many respects, the tone was set for nearly two millennia of oppression of the Copts, one of the world’s oldest Christian sects, by the martyrdom of St Mark the Evangelist, the disciple who established the Christian faith in Alexandria just a few years after the ascension of Christ. The establishment of a new religion was bitterly resented by the city’s pagan population, who feared it would turn Alexandrians away from the worship of their traditional gods.

Nina Khrushcheva: Shades of Stalin

Nina Khrushcheva is Nikita Khrushchev's great-granddaughter. Nostalgia for the Soviet past is nothing new in certain quarters of the former U.S.S.R. But the ongoing show trial in Kiev of Yulia Tymoshenko, Ukraine’s former prime minister, is providing a dark new twist to the theme. Ever since the U.S.S.R. collapsed, businessmen and politicians have sought to breathe new life into various Soviet practices, usually with harmless, if kitschy, results. Oligarchs decorate their Danish-modern offices with socialist-realist paintings of Stalin dressed in the white ice-cream-vendor uniforms he favored. Mothers dress their children in retro uniforms of the Young Pioneers, the communist version of the Boy Scouts. A restaurant in St.

Owen Matthews and Anna Nemtsova: Back to the U.S.S.R.

Owen Matthews and Anna Nemtsova are writers for Newsweek. When the history of Russia’s next revolution is written, Vladimir Putin’s decision last month to return to the Kremlin will surely mark the point where it all began. Before the prime minister’s announcement of his 2012 presidential bid, Russia had a chance—a slim one—of eventually becoming a functional democracy where regimes change through the ballot box. With Putin’s return, Russia tips inexorably toward becoming just another petro-dictatorship whose regime is propped up by oil money and repression. This is a fateful moment in Russian history, because suddenly it’s more likely that change, when it does come, will arrive from outside, not inside, the system.

Sidney Tarrow: Why Occupy Wall Street is Not the Tea Party of the Left

SIDNEY TARROW is Emeritus Maxwell M. Upson Professor of Government at Cornell University. He is the author of several books, including The New Transnational Activism and Contentious Politics. "There's a difference between an emotional outcry and a movement," former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Andrew Young said recently of the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. "This is an emotional outcry," he went on. "The difference is organization and articulation." Young knows something about social movements: as a young pastor in the South, he joined the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and was jailed for participating in demonstrations in Alabama and Florida. But his suggestion that what is happening today in lower Manhattan lacks real momentum rings false -- the civil rights movement is not a precedent one can use to understand Occupy Wall Street.

Michael Lind: Democrats Can’t Occupy Wall Street

Michael Lind is Policy Director of the Economic Growth Program at the New America Foundation and is the author of "The Next American Nation: The New Nationalism and the Fourth American Revolution." Can the Occupy Wall Street movement do for the Democrats what the Tea Party has done for the Republicans? Will a spontaneous grass-roots uprising against the rich neutralize the manipulated “Astroturf” Tea Party movement’s assault on big government, assure a second term for Barack Obama and lead to the new New Deal that progressives have been waiting for?Alas, probably not. Ever since Richard Nixon won his reelection victory in 1972 by appealing to many of the discontented populists attracted to George Wallace, the Republican Party, formerly a party of big city boardroom types and small-town Rotarians, has been based at least in its rhetoric on right-wing populism. The Tea Party movement is merely an extreme exaggeration of the mainstream GOP.

Gordon G. Chang: China's "Red" Revival

Gordon G. Chang is the author of two books, The Coming Collapse of China and Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes On the World. “The river runs to the east for 30 years, the river runs to the west for 30 years, and now it will run east for another 30 years,” saysHan Deqiang, founder of the leftist Utopia website. “The transition is already occurring but people are failing to notice.” Maoists like to speak in poetic language, but we should listen to them because they appear ascendant in the Chinese political system.

Ian Buruma: Napoleon's Curse ... The Illusion of Omnipotence Has Exhausted America and Spoiled its Allies

Dutch writer Ian Buruma, currently a Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library, is author, most recently, of Taming the Gods: Religion and Democracy on Three Continents. Too much power is not good for a person, or for a nation. It leads to hubris, to the childish illusion of omnipotence, and, even when driven by good intentions, to abuse. In the case of the United States, the illusion of being exceptional, the idea that the "Greatest Nation in the History of the World" can do anything, is doubtless fed by the manner of the country's inception. France and the United States are the only Western democracies born from revolutions. Like France, the American republic likes to claim that it represents not only the hopes of humankind, but universal values. The American way is the global way, or it jolly well should be. What the French call la mission civilisatrice has also been a driving force for Americans. The national destiny is to civilize the benighted world. To believers in this mission -- who are not always in the mainstream of U.S.

Thomas L. Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum: America Really Was That Great

Thomas L. Friedman is foreign-affairs columnist for the New York Times. Michael Mandelbaum is Christian A. Herter professor of American foreign policy at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. This essay is adapted from their book, That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back. Is America still exceptional? The question has become a contentious issue in American politics over the last few years. But the answer has implications that go well beyond the political fortunes of Republicans and Democrats in the United States.