Danielle Ryan – NYT asks: Are Western values losing their sway?

Steven Erlanger in the New York Times, asks: Are Western Values Losing Their Sway? Here’s my two cents: The problem with our “Western values” is not the values in themselves, although some are certainly questionable. The real problem is the triumphalism that came with them after the West’s ‘victory’ at the end of the Cold War, a dangerous triumphalism that …

4 Ways the One Percent Is Trying to Buy Their Immortality By Larry Schwartz

Humankind has long dreamed of immortality. Surely, somewhere, Ponce de Leon’s Fountain of Youth awaits, allowing us to escape our inevitable fate of non-existence. Not surprisingly, some very wealthy tech executives are determined to buy their way out of that inevitability. These guys are living the high life and they don’t want it to stop. Peter Thiel, the founder of PayPal, …

Distorting Putin’s Favorite Philosophers

What started the new Cold War? According to the State Department, it was Russia’s illegal violation of Ukraine’s sovereign borders. The Kremlin, for its part, insists it was a U.S.-facilitated coup in Ukraine which destroyed the constitutional order there, causing chaos and dangers to Russian security to which Russia had no choice but to respond. According to academic foreign policy …