I Do Think We're On The Edge

After 1945 What Happened Was Rather The Opposite: With One Major Exception Boundaries Stayed Broadly Intact And People Were Moved Instead.

Above All, The Thrall In Which An Ideology Holds A People Is Best Measured By Their Collective Inability To Imagine Alternatives.

The Different American Experience Of The 20th Century Is Crucial Because The Lesson Of The Century For Europe, Which Essentially Is That The Human Condition Is Tragic, Led It To Have A Build A Welfare System And A Set Of Laws And Social Arrangements That Are More Prophylactic Than Idealistic. It's Not About Building Perfect Futures; It's About Preventing Terrible Pasts. I Think That Is Something That Europeans In The Second Half Of The 20th Century Knew In Their Bones And Americans Never Did, And It's One Of The Big Differences Between The Two Western Cultures.

The People Whose Necks Hurt When I Write About The Middle East Tend To Live In Brooklyn Or Boca Raton: The Kind Of Zionist Who Pays Another Man To Live In Israel For Him. I Have Nothing But Contempt For Such People.

I Know Exactly How And Where I Am Going To Die. The Only Question Is When.