More Irishmen died fighting for Britain in World War I than died fighting against her in all of Ireland's bids for independence combined.
Look, the media are trapped by changes in the technology and business of their industry.
And that is how we intend to destroy the enemy!" The superior shakes his head wearily. "Young man, the Soviets are our adversary. The Navy is the enemy.
The monster has escaped Elba!" "The tyrant has landed at Cannes!" "Bonaparte meets the troops." "Napoleon approaches Paris." "His Imperial Majesty has entered the capital.
One might almost say, to adapt von Clausewitz, that modern warfare is PR by other means. And war-winning strategies mean that modern armies most stop treating their communications operations as secondary assignments or (as still too often happens) dumping grounds for officers who have failed at everything else - but as missions absolutely essential to success.
The Soviet Union was brought down by a strange global coalition of Western European conservatives, Eastern European nationalists, Russian liberals, Chinese communists, and Afghan Islamic reactionaries, to name only a few. Many of these discordant groups disliked the United States intensely. But Americans were able to mobilize them to direct their ire at the Soviet Union first.
Reagan survived the Iran-Contra scandal because the elements of it that were illegal (aiding anti-communist Nicaraguans) were popular and the things that were unpopular (arming the Iranians) were quite legal.
I am really and truly frightened by the collapse of support for the Republican Party by the young and the educated.
Events don't happen because I write a speech. I am allowed to write a speech because events are going to happen.
World War II proved a hypothesis that Alexis de Tocqueville advanced a century before: the war-fighting potential of a democracy is at its greatest when war is most intense; at its weakest when war is most limited. This is a lesson with enduring relevance to our own times - and our own wars.
To balance China, the democracies will need new friends - and India with its fast-growing economy, youthful population, and democratic politics seems the obvious candidate.
The great power the president has is that he is the most prominent person in the biggest media event on the planet. He has the attention of the nation and the world. When he speaks, everybody listens.
The five million people who watch cable news are the political nation, the people who really care.
One can shape history as much through the facts one omits as through the facts one includes.
My mom was truly an iconic figure, a great journalist and a pioneering woman who died at 54 of cancer without ever having revealed to viewers that she was ill.
A generation ago, or two, when there were three channels, plus PBS, and when you needed - when you needed 15 million people to make a living, the media could focus on the broad country. And most people had no choice about getting political information. It was there at 6:30 whether you wanted it or not.
America under 30 is a more non-whites place than America over 60. And we know that non-whites and whites vote differently.
A novel makes it possible to understand not just events, but the people who control the events; not only their choices, but also their motives.
A presidential speech is always the work of many hands.
There is no right to work in a think tank, and these are very privileged positions.
Whenever you discuss politics, it is always better to use individual names rather then the term neocon.
The big winners under the American fiscal system are the rich, who pay some of the lowest taxes anywhere in the world; the old, who are the main beneficiaries of the American social service state; farmers, rural people. These are Republican constituencies.
The elite isn't leading anymore. It's trapped.
Partly because of the desperate economic situation in the country, what were once the leading institutions of conservatism are constrained.
If right and left are competing to be the biggest victim, who is competing to be the government?
