The Questioning Librarian

We've come to expect that many of our politicians are going to be hypocritical in some aspect of their lives. Whether it is a "family values" politician like Louisiana's David Vitter being caught with prostitutes, or candidates who pledge to be honest being netted in corruption stings, revelations of hypocrisy are so frequent that they hardly even seem to merit a shrug. Yet there is at least one type of political hypocrisy that, no matter how often it happens, we should be paying attention to. Hypocrisy in any form is contemptible, but hypocrisy on matters of economy affects us all. This issue was brought to mind this week with the entrance of Rep. Paul Ryan into the race for Speaker of the House, one of the most powerful positions in the nation and third in line to the Presidency, after the Vice-President. Paul, often held up as a reasonable man in a party gone off the deep end, is well-known for his proposals to reform Social Security, which usually involve...

I was intrigued when I came across a review of a forthcoming book that sought to reconcile the seemingly contradictory legacies of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. A few months later, I borrowed a copy and was enthralled by what the author had to say. Greg Grandin, author of well-received books like Fordlandia and Empire of Necessity , tackles the thorny issue of one of the United States' most notorious diplomats in Kissinger's Shadow: The Long Reach of America's Most Controversial Statesman .  Drawing on newly declassified documents, Grandin's portrayal of Kissinger is far from complimentary. While giving him credit for his role in helping to normalize relations with China, and in brokering an arms-reduction treaty with the Soviet Union, the majority of the work zeroes in on acts that were an outgrowth of Kissinger's own philosophy of history, as outlined in his undergraduate thesis. Decline, Kissinger wrote, is not inevitable in a great power, s...