I graduated from high school 25 years ago next month. I doubt I’ll go to the reunion, but a quarter-century is an appropriate vantage point for a backward glance. Jimmy Carter was president then, his reputation has traveled several full circles since. Gas cost 80 cents a gallon, the Cold War was still on, the […]

To hear George W. Bush tell it, the Iraqis attacking American troops are either remnant supporters of Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime or maniacal Islamic militants, bent on destruction of all things Western. “They hate us for our freedom,” Mr. Bush says. Do you think that’s really the case? Whenever Mr. Bush gives that line, he […]

When I was growing up in Western New York, if a family had a small retreat on a lake for fishing or weekend getaways, it was called a “cottage.” My Uncle John had a cottage on Lake Ontario; an unheated, uninsulated, summertime-only cottage built in the years after World War One. In Vermont, such structures […]

I’m writing this week from Costa Rica, the only non-militarized country in the Western Hemisphere. In 1948, following a five-week civil war, Costa Rica dissolved its army (it had lost the war to a band of rebel upstarts). At the same time, the nation launched a political experiment unique to the region. It took the […]