Free Republic

I have a new fear. And this one’s a doozy. Having weathered more than one social-­media s- -t storm, I’m one column away from the round of mob opprobrium that sinks my career for good. A single unacceptable sentiment, a word usage misconstrued, a sentence taken out of context suffices these days to implode a reputation decades in the making and to trigger ­McCarthyite blacklisting. But that isn’t the fear in its entirety. Suppose a perceived violation of progressive orthodoxy translates into the kind of institutional cowardice on display in the forced resignation of Ian Buruma from The New York Review...

Infidel; Murder In Amsterdam; In The Name of Honour; Shame EmailPrintNormal fontLarge font Paul SheehanFebruary 17, 2007 Three books by three women describe the violent suppression affecting the lives of hundreds of millions of women. Ayaan Hirsi Ali AuthorAyaan Hirsi Ali; Ian Buruma; Mukhtar Mai; Jasvinder SangheraGenreSociety/Politics, FictionPublisherFree Press; Atlantic Books; Virago; Hodder Stoughton WE ARE TOLD we are living through a clash of civilisations, a clash between militant Islam and the infidels.This is only the surface tension. There is a clash of civilisations, but the deeper cause is not religion. It is sex. A great cultural struggle is being...

Washington, according to some reports, feels like a city at war. A few days in the US capital are enough to reveal the splits, not just between Democrats and Republicans, but also the various factions on the right, squabbling for the president's fickle attention. Much depends on the outcome of these struggles. Several people I met, none of them even vaguely on the left, were convinced there would be no war. The president, they assured me, was backtracking. Others told me, with equal conviction, that Bush certainly would go to war. Then there are those who talk as if the...

When the West is under attack, as it was on September 11, it is often assumed — not only in America — that the West means the United States. This goes for those on the left, who believe that U.S. foreign policy (or "imperialism") and U.S. corporate power (or "globalization") have brought the suicide bombers and holy warriors upon America by marginalizing and bullying the millions of people who have failed to benefit from the capitalist world order. But it also goes for conservatives, who think that Islamist radicalism, like Communism before, is an attack on "our values," that is,...

When the West is under attack, as it was on September 11, it is often assumed -- not only in America -- that the West means the United States. This goes for those on the left, who believe that U.S. foreign policy (or "imperialism") and U.S. corporate power (or "globalization") have brought the suicide bombers and holy warriors upon America by marginalizing and bullying the millions of people who have failed to benefit from the capitalist world order. But it also goes for conservatives, who think that Islamist radicalism, like Communism before, is an attack on "our values," that is,...