At the WSJ: ‘How To Save Art From Islamic State:’
I’m afraid it will likely take more than lists, and that it’s more than just art at stake, including the low probability. high consequences of an attack on American soil….
…but the art really matters:
‘Beginning in 2000, the Paris-based International Council of Museums (ICOM) developed web-based Red Lists identifying those categories of archaeological material and ancient art most in jeopardy. The surveys, which are updated regularly, began with African objects and now include heritage at risk in Iraq and Syria.’
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The Taliban is another ahistorical Islamist movement with fascistic elements seeking to impose their vision of past, present and future upon their subjects.
Above is their response to the ‘modern’ world, and they still pose unique challenges to American and Western interests.
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John Cochrane on economic growth:
‘Sclerotic growth is the overriding economic issue of our time. From 1950 to 2000 the US economy grew at an average rate of 3.5% per year. Since 2000, it has grown at half that rate, 1.7%. From the bottom of the great recession in 2009, usually a time of super-fast catch-up growth, it has only grown at two percent per year.2 Two percent, or less, is starting to look like the new normal.’
How much of this is ‘normal,’ anyways?
Perhaps in order to properly integrate more immigrants (attracting them to the melting pot concept and allowing them to earn their own way over a few generations), and in order to create more harmony between individuals who are members of different racial and ethnic groups, we need more growth.
Wouldn’t you like to grow the American economy in a non-zero sum game, not only toward national security ends, but without losing sight of those ends either?
Yes, city machine politics hasn’t changed much, and ignorance is nearly always the rule and not the exception in human affairs, but it’s this blog’s belief that turning our federal system of government into a repository for activism as well as an estate for secular idealism hinders what is possible.