What America Needs in 2008: Educated Problem-Solving and Kitchen Table Values

Abstract

Given a set of issues like racism, sexism, poverty, gun control and ongoing international conflicts around Iraq and US foreign policy in general, America in 2008 needs a president who is equipped to effectively understand history, critically analyze present situations and clearly articulate complex solutions to complex problems. It is not just a platform or a specific position on one or two issues that is most needed. It is a person with a set of skills that enables him or her to synthesize vast amounts of information, understand the far-reaching implications of decisions made by the American president and make decisions that benefit the common good understood as broadly as possible. Along with educated problem-solving skills, the next president must also pay attention to a set of values that have been called "kitchen table values." Looking at these two elements in turn requires acknowledging where the US has been for the past eight years as evidence for where it must go in the next four or eight years.     

日本军国主义与中国劳工"万人坑"

翻开侵华日军暴行的历史,人们不难发现,侵华日军对中国人民的屠杀暴行,有两种不同的方式:     

It Takes Modern Means to be Traditional: On Recognizing Indigenous Cultural Communities in the Philippines

The main thesis of this essay is that being recognized as traditional or indigenous requires the employment of modern means. A form of ‘Bureaucratic Orientalism’ has been devised, constructing and reaffirming ‘the Other’ through the minutiae of administrative procedures and contemporary representational processes. These procedures exist for the twin purposes of establishing the right to act as an indigenous group, and of circumscribing the obligations of the state, and possibly of other institutions of governance. The entire debate is the expression of a dilemma that has no solution but is actually an expression of modernity. The three pillars upon which indigeneity is affirmed are a national (internationally legitimized) legal system, the contemporary world of NGOs, and the institutions of local government. Thus, through the very process of being recognized as ‘indigenous’, these groups enter the realms of modernity. The Philippines provide a case study for these explorations.     

Getting It Right, Getting It Wrong: The Soviet Collapse Revisited

Book reviewed in this article:
Michael Cox (ed.), Rethinking the Soviet collapse: Sovietology, the death of communism and the new Russia