After weeks of attacking Venezuelan boats that may or may not have been carrying drugs—drugs
that may or may not have been fentanyl—on vessels that may or may not have been bound for
the United States, and where the attacks may or may not have involved the killing of
shipwrecked crew members
We are surprisingly bloodthirsty people. We impose the longest prison sentences in the world. We are one of only seven countries that inflict more than ten death penalties a year, with the others hardly our demographic, developmental, or political peers (China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Somalia, and Singapore).
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We have just celebrated the 4th of July, with its parades, speeches, and fireworks announcing our pride, even conceit, that America’s Independence Day is the greatest of all Independence Days, as America is the greatest of all nations, offering its citizens the greatest of all governments. The complexities of that claim – and putting aside its apparent inadequacies, inconsistencies, incoherence, and disappointments – necessarily include a shortlist of what is critical to a view of America’s ascendant greatness. Democracy, prosperity, opportunity, and liberty are on the shortlist, and so is the rule of law.
Read MoreFree speech is worse than messy. It is unruly, annoying, chaotic, unsightly, loud and intrusive. It is full of individuals who are uninformed or misinformed, full of statements of exaggeration and hyperbole, many crude and false, and taken together, too often bothersome, irritating, overblown, and endlessly repetitive.
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The three college presidents testifying last week did the almost impossible: they made Congress – this Congress – look good. That is, testifying before the most dysfunctional, uninformed, petty and parochial House of Representatives in American history
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