Musings of a Patriot

Tag: international

  • Federalist Nos. 15 – 16

    Federalist Nos. 15 and 16 led me to two conclusions. First, Hamilton is accusing those who oppose the Constitution of hoping for a different result by repeating their previous actions (sounds like our modern politics of perpetual incumbency). Second, the confederacy that Hamilton describes that preceded our current (theoretically) Constitutional government sounds a lot like…

  • Embracing Broad Perspectives

    I was listening to a story on NPR about young Indians abroad returning to help their country. One statement that caught my attention was the assertion that Indians who have lived in Western cultures have experienced the problems and some of the attempts to fix problems that the West has been dealing with for decades…

  • Free Marketer’s Dilemma

    I’m a proponent of the value of free markets and their ability to enrich people. The problem is that the free market only works in a closed system, in other words a free market is not favored when intersecting with markets which are being manipulated. The issue of how to compensate for intersecting our supposedly…

  • Our Crisis in Foreign Policy

    Frank does a good job discussing One Lesson From Two September 11th Events. He is completely right to ask: What will it take for America to learn a similar lesson–that if we expect to be respected and not feared, that we must give respect? Why does America think it is better than the rest of…

  • Looking to Europe

    I do not look favorably on many of the traits common among many European countries (higher taxes to fund broader social programs, shorter workweeks, that kind of thing). However a brief mention of Europe in Transportation Watch reminded me that there is one area where we could learn from Europe. They have learned to make…

  • Non-Binding Resolutions

    While listening to NPR today I heard a senator talking about many agreements we have made with the Iraqi government where the Iraqi’s failed to do what they promised. He attributed that failure to the fact that "the agreements [had] no teeth." That got me thinking. We don’t have to look outside our country to…

  • Semantics

    I have been wanting to write about this for a while but never got around to it – while listening to The World on NPR, which is produced in part by the BBC, I have noticed British reporters refer to the democrats as “the opposition party.” Many democratic governments around the world are structured differently…

  • Well Stated

    I stumbled onto Peonicus’ View of Politics the same day I started my new blog and I thought it would be a good excuse to post a reaction and test out my blog a little more. I was amazed to hear criticism for both the left and the right so early in the post. Right…

  • The Iraqi Constitution

    I have been very interested to hear about the progress on the Iraqi constitution. Naturally most of the commentary was about how bad the constitution was and how it was a step backwards for the US. I keep hearing about a new Iran. Finally I read this article where there was something positive to say.…

  • No god but God

    I have been trying to learn more about Islam in an effort to sort out the truth from the fiction that is reported in conjunction with the war on terror and other similar realities of our day. As a part of that goal I recently picked up No god but God by Reza Aslan, an…