Free Republic

Have you ever thought about what life was like for your great-grandparents? If you really have, you'd agree with Gregg Easterbrook of the Brookings Institution that our great-grandparents would consider the world we live in today to be some kind of utopia. Yet, all of the progress we enjoy hasn't made Americans any happier. In fact, the opposite is true -- it's made us more unhappy. In his new book, THE PROGRESS PARADOX: HOW LIFE GETS BETTER WHILE PEOPLE FEEL WORSE, Easterbrook begins by telling us just how good we have it: The average Westerner lives better than 99.4 percent...

Social hypochondria is the national disease of the most successful nation. By most indexes, life has improved beyond the dreams of even very recent generations. Yet many Americans, impervious to abundant data and personal experiences, insist that progress is a chimera. Gregg Easterbrook's impressive new book, ''The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse,'' explains this perversity. Easterbrook, a Washington journalist and fellow of the Brookings Institution, assaults readers with good news: American life expectancy has dramatically increased in a century, from 47 to 77 years. Our great-great-grandparents all knew someone who died of some disease we...

After The New Republic’s Gregg Easterbrook wrote in his online column that Jewish executives in Hollywood "worship money above all else," he apologized. Every group in some way lives up to its stereotypes, and even knows that about itself — otherwise there’d be no specific humor within each tribe or dismay about the tribe within the tribe. Tribes and nations have opposing codes, and smaller groups within bigger nations or cultures will always suffer for the differences. None of us live without summary judgments of other tribes, in the largest sense of that word. The scapegoat mechanism is biological, and...

To our readers: We are sorry. Last week Gregg Easterbrook wrote an item in his blog for tnr.com about the moral culpability of Hollywood executives who profit handsomely from movies that glorify violence and depict it with pornographic vividness. In the course of his denunciation, Easterbrook referred to "Jewish executives [who] worship money above all else." Many readers found the remark offensive. They were right. The phrase was right out of the classical vocabulary of modern anti-Semitism. We make no defense of these words and we are mortified that they appeared under the auspices of a magazine that has for...

I just got off the phone with Gregg Easterbrook who emailed me that he wanted to talk. He is a warm and cordial man. He honestly solicited what I thought he should have done but I could offer him little advice. I have enough trouble deciding what I should do, but I did point out that in this world that has gone radioactive on what the Stalinists used to call “The Jewish Question”—from the appalling UN Conference on “Human Rights” in Durban to yesterday’s rehash of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” for the entire Moslem world by the...

New York Times nitwit Frank Rich has falsely accused Mel Gibson of implicitly slurring Hollywood's Jewish executives, but it's the left-leaning New Republic that made this charge, and as explicitly as possible. New Republic senior editor Gregg Easterbrook is scrambling to apologize for writing that the producers of "Kill Bill" are "Jewish executives" who "worship money above all else." In an apology issued late Thursday, he said he was guilty of "mangling words" in his column Monday. Easterbrook had attacked writer/director Quentin Tarantino for glorifying violence and denounced Miramax and its parent company, Disney, for "wallowing in gore" for...

WASHINGTON (AP) - A senior editor of the New Republic magazine is apologizing for saying in his column that the producers of the hit movie "Kill Bill" are "Jewish executives" who "worship money above all else." In an apology posted late Thursday on the New Republic's Web site the editor, Gregg Easterbrook, said he was guilty of "mangling words" in the article which appeared Monday on the Web. Easterbrook attacked "Kill Bill" and its writer/director Quentin Tarantino for glorifying violence and criticized Miramax, which released the film, and its parent company, Disney, for "wallowing in gore" for profit. Michael Eisner,...

Stealth drones, G.P.S.-guided smart munitions that hit precisely where aimed; antitank bombs that guide themselves; space-relayed data links that allow individual squad leaders to know exactly where American and opposition forces are during battle — the United States military rolled out all this advanced technology, and more, in its lightning conquest of Iraq. No other military is even close to the United States. The American military is now the strongest the world has ever known, both in absolute terms and relative to other nations; stronger than the Wehrmacht in 1940, stronger than the legions at the height of Roman power....

Compared to U.S. military, game over for other nations Stealth drones, GPS-guided smart munitions that hit precisely where aimed; anti-tank bombs that guide themselves; space-relayed data links that allow individual squad leaders to know exactly where U.S. and opposition forces are during battle. The U.S. military rolled out all this advanced technology, and more, in its lightning conquest of Iraq. No other military Analysisis even close to the United States'. The U.S. military is now the strongest the world has ever known, both in absolute terms and relative to other nations; stronger than the Wehrmacht in 1940, stronger than the...

Respond to this Article April 1980 Beam Me Out Of This Death Trap, Scotty 5 ... 4 ... 3 ... 2 ... 1 ... Goodbye, Columbia By Gregg Easterbrook This April 1980 Washington Monthly cover story on the problems and progress of NASA's space shuttle program was written one year before Columbia's first launch in 1981. To view a larger image of the original cover, click here. The most expensive flying machine ever constructed sputtered and smacked through the low waves, kicking up spray, straining mightily to take flight. It had been bobbing by the dock in Long Beach...