American audiences tend to underappreciate the British, but 240 years ago they were us: They were the most powerful nation on Earth. Their mercantile empire spanned the planet. They had the most potent and experienced army and navy the world had ever...
True, most Americans give lip service to the proposition that even the most exalted among us have their flaws, but we are eager to believe that presidents manage to rise above the limitations that beset the rest of us.
The Syrian border town of Qa'im was the main gateway Islamic radicals used to go to Iraq. Syria became the passageway for extremists from Egypt, Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and other Muslim nations to fight a jihad against American forces...
Faced with the crippling sanctions, Iran could simply decide it is paying too high a cost to pursue its nuclear program and could opt for negotiations and reconciliation with the United States and other members of the international community. This is...
Thought and knowledge are natures in which apparatus and pretension avail nothing. Gowns, and pecuniary foundations, though of towns of gold, can never countervail the least sentence or syllable of wit. Forget this, and out American colleges will rec...
I have either run private equity funded companies or been a partner in a private equity fund since 1982. I've had a front row view of the vital role private equity continues to play in building and keeping American businesses competitive in the globa...
Warren Moon and Doug Williams really didn't run that much. That's the negative stereotype when it comes to African-American quarterbacks, that most of us just run. Those guys threw it around. I like to think I can throw it around a little bit.
All my early books are written as if I were Indian. In England, I had started writing as if I were English; now I write as if I were American. You take other people's backgrounds and characters; Keats called it negative capability.
I think most Americans believe that although it's better not to use military force if you can avoid it, that the world simply doesn't provide us the luxury of giving away military force as an important tool of foreign policy.
Republicans and Democrats are obsessed with making sure that illegal aliens are granted citizenship. The American people are not. They're concerned about jobs, the economy, debt. They're concerned about a plundering country. They're concerned about a...
I've had some Democrat African-American leaders tell me they're really not all that comfortable with Obama as the lead at the MLK festivities 'cause he's not down for the struggle. He does not have that in his roots.
While Hurricane Katrina demonstrated the dangers of failing to evacuate hospitals from the path of a storm, Hurricane Gustav demonstrated that moving thousands of sick people has its own risks. Gustav also highlighted a critical vulnerability of Amer...
We are told, that the subjection of Americans may tend to the diminution of our own liberties; an event, which none but very perspicacious politicians are able to foresee. If slavery be thus fatally contagious, how is it that we hear the loudest yelp...
Shoot, I must have lived such a doggoned sheltered life as a normal, independent American up there in the Last Frontier, schooled with only public education and a lowly state university degree, because obviously I haven't learned enough to dismiss co...
Eye-popping tales of growing income inequality are hardly new. By now, nearly every American must be painfully aware of the widening pay gap between top executives and shop floor laborers; between 'Master of the Universe' financiers and pretty much e...
The greatest propaganda coup of the American Right has been to convince its citizens that we are in the grip of a liberal conspiracy. As a result, Obama is to the right of Richard Nixon on most issues. And there is we believe, certainly some space to...
The British were keen for 30 caliber guns, did not believe in daylight bombing. American experts said 30 caliber was not enough; we had to have 50 caliber, also said daylight bombing was right provided the planes attacked in formation, with 50 calibe...
Less Than Zero and American Psycho were both really different, so I was just like, Okay, he's just really doesn't have anything pleasant to say, you know? But I get it. I get at least why it's difficult and what he's really doing.
In Canadian comedy, you'll almost never see guns. If you bring a gun into a scene, it's like, 'Whoa! Wow, how are we going to deal with that!' Guns in an American comedy are a given. Violence in America is used in a much more cavalier way.
For thousands and thousands of American kids, libraries are the only safe place they can find to study, a haven free from the dangers of street or the numbing temptations of television. As schools cut back services, the library looms even more import...
The Internet is emblematic of an era in which what happens in Southeast Asia or southern Africa - from democratic advances to deforestation to the fight against aids - can affect Americans. As has been observed about water pollution, we all live down...
