Global Paradigms

I had the pleasure to attend and even to address the recent meeting in Washington, DC, of the John Randolph Club(JRC) which was organized by the Rockford Institute which publishes Chronicles magazine. JRC, Rockford and Chronicles are all part of what is known as the Paleoconservative movement. The panel that I shared with with an old friend, Serge Trifkovic focused on the Iraq War and issues related to U.S. foreign policy and the neocon imperial project in the Middle East. It was an intellectual delight to exchange views with so many highly-educated men and women who have contrarian views on domestic and foreign policy issues. Some of the other speakers included Thomas Fleming, Peter Brimelow, Justin Raimondo, and Taki. I just finised reading Fleming's The Morality of Everyday Life: Rediscovering an Ancient Alternative to the Liberal Tradition which is a fantastic read and a great introduction to paleoconservative ideas. Fleming challenges the philosophical foundation...

some of my recent thoughts on the subject: Business Times - 28 Sep 2007 US may have to bid farewell to good times The house of cards is falling amid soaring oil prices, diving home sector and credit crunch IT will be recalled as a Golden Economic Age, the Greenspan Era, or the Goldilocks Economy - but one thing is clear: The good days of doing-away-with-the-business-cycle and spending-like-there-is-no-tomorrow are probably over as far as the US economy is concerned. Indeed, it is becoming obvious that Americans will have to say 'bye, bye' to an age when consumers could take out huge mortgage loans to pay for new homes and spend the weekends shopping for the latest plasma televisions - made in China - as they maxed out on their credit cards. The era when financial institutions could juggle new and increasingly complex ('exotic') financial products that made it possible to extend more credit to the consumers and businesses, including packages of mortgages to those who ha...

September 24, 2007 Issue Copyright © 2007 The American Conservative A Separate Peace Leaving the country to save it by Leon Hadar Casablanca, Sept. 17, 2010—The international conference that opened in this beautiful city yesterday is expected to put some final touches on a United Nations-sponsored accord on the future of the new state being set up in Mesopo-tamia, the Confederation of Iraq and Kurdistan (CFIK). The agreement was reached in early July, following months of negotiations in Bern, Switzerland, where the Arab League, Iran, and Turkey, together with representatives of the main ethnic and religious groups in Iraq that have been fighting over control of the country, accepted the formula proposed by the two lead mediators, U.S. Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke and French Foreign Secretary Bernard Kouchner. The agreement calls for the division of the former Iraq into two political entities—the Islamic Republic of Iraq (IRI) and the Kurdish Republic (KR)—that are delineated by...