Topic: washington post
Turkey’s ugly election
Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ugly win in Sunday’s referendum on a new, authoritarian constitution for Turkey creates big problems for the country’s secular democratic forces and for Turkey’s Western allies – but also for Erdogan himself.
Post: A cult of personality dashes Turkey’s democratic dreams
Little more than a decade ago, Turkey appeared to be an emerging democracy with vibrant civil society and somewhat independent media. No longer. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has abandoned democracy and is building a strongman cult of personality.
Christakis: The Halloween email that spooked Yale
Some called my email tone-deaf or even racist, but it came from a conviction that young people are more capable than we realize and that the growing tendency to cultivate vulnerability in students carries unacknowledged costs.
Post: A pivot to where?
The pivot to Asia piloted by President Barack Obama has been rocked by setbacks that should concern everyone who believes that the United States must maintain a robust role in the Pacific at a time of China’s intensifying quest for power and influence.
Applebaum: How Duterte cast himself as an agent of change
Standing with China, Duterte looks new and different, bold and fast, a man ready to gamble, to junk a decades-old alliance in favor of a partnership with a decades-old rival.
Post: Profits for the Castro regime
If you think the president’s policy will “empower” the fledgling Cuban private sector, as opposed to the overbearing state, think again.
Baxter: When science fiction becomes science
A week ago, Proxima b itself was fiction. Now that we know it is real, the fictional speculation moves on to what it would to be like to go there.
Post: Charter schools under attack
Schools that fail to educate students – be they charter or traditional – should be shuttered.
Overly: Humans once opposed coffee and refrigeration. Here’s why we often hate new stuff.
Humans have a habit of stalling their own progress. From coffee to mechanical refrigeration to genetically altered food, history is littered with innovations that sparked resistance before becoming fixtures in everyday life.
Keillor: America, let’s make tomatoes great
This is a column about tomatoes. Nothing political, nothing about the bitter controversy – Tomato: Fruit or Vegetable?
Will: The travesty of teacher tenure
California school districts are forced to adopt what is called the “dance of the lemons,” whereby grossly ineffective teachers are shuffled from school to school.
Krauthammer: Brexit – Sovereign Kingdom or little England?
Brexit was an assertion of national sovereignty and an attempt, in one fell swoop, to recover it. There is much to admire in that impulse. But at what cost?
Will: The hinge of the Great War
Thomas Hardy’s description of the 1813 Battle of Leipzig – “a miles-wide pant of pain” – fit the battle of the Somme, where a soldier wrote, “From No Man’s Land ... comes one great groan.”
Post: The Brexit antidote is a strong NATO
How much further the “special relationship” between the United States and Britain will be devalued will depend on what now looks like a very unpredictable course of events in London.
Keillor: A decade well-saved
So I skipped my 30s. I grew a beard, moved to the country, wore old farmer clothes, got a job in radio, took up bluegrass [...] and adopted the identity of an elderly sharecropper.
EDITORIAL – Post vs. Mitchell: The hit job that missed its mark
Last week, The Washington Post published a long, somewhat puzzling story on a small nonprofit group that advocates against enacting onerous and unfair restrictions on the international financial industry.
Mitchell: Is defending tax competition akin to ‘trading with the enemy’?
Our patriotism is to the ideals of the Founding Fathers, not to the bad tax policy of the U.S. government
Post: Venezuela in agony
By most measures, Venezuela is already a failed state: Amid crippling shortages of food, medicine, power and water, every societal ailment is soaring.
Will: The United Kingdom at the crossroads
Sixty-five years ago, what has become the European Union was an embryo conceived in fear. It has been stealthily advanced from an economic to a political project, and it remains enveloped in a watery utopianism even as it becomes more dystopian.
Kunkle: Checked bags should be free
The airlines could do something today that might ease your wait in airport security checkpoint lines tomorrow: Stop charging fees for checked baggage.
Keillor: What will Bill be wearing?
Everybody is wondering if white men will vote for Hillary and, speaking as a white man, I say it depends a lot on Bill. If he looks happy on the sidelines gazing up at her with dewy-eyed admiration, then yes.
Scarborough: The vapidity of America’s foreign policy debate
Though hard to believe, the current crop of candidates running for president may prove to be even worse than George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
Lyons: In the Land of the Falling Moms
In the Land of the Falling Moms, the difference between upright and upended is measured in inches, but the consequences are calculated in months.
Post: True ‘dignity’ in Argentina
Today's lesson in responsible democratic leadership comes to us from, of all places, Argentina.
Post: What’s next for Haiti?
It's a relief that Haitian leaders were able to agree on an 11th-hour deal to avert a power vacuum after President Michael Martelly left office.
Post: Detroit’s unacceptable schools
Children who go to school in Detroit face conditions that are inexcusable. The entire system, not just the physical plant, is in need of drastic overhaul.
