James Fallows
James Fallows
James Mackenzie Fallowsis an American writer and journalist. He has been a national correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly for many years. His work has also appeared in Slate, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker and The American Prospect, among others. He is a former editor of U.S. News & World Report, and as President Jimmy Carter's chief speechwriter for two years was the youngest person ever to hold that job...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth2 August 1949
CountryUnited States of America
The President? Hmmm, I wonder who that might be? Could it be, perhaps, the sitting two-term incumbent of the same party holding its convention? The person whose economic and military policies shape the environment the next president will deal with? As best I can tell, in the tens of thousands of words making up the combined remarks of John McCain, Sarah Palin, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, and Lindsay Graham, the Name That Must Not Be Uttered appeared exactly once...
If you didn't know better, you might have thought in 2003 and 2004 that U.S. government strategy was being set by people trying to make enemies rather than friends in the Arab-Islamic world. And if you didn't know better, you might think that the Chinese government's approach to the Olympics is being set by people trying to make the country look bad.
The Olympic Games are for 'the youth of the world,' but they're organized and scored by countries. It's no surprise that countries treat them as vehicles of national pride, and assume that their people will be most interested in their own athletes. So anybody who was saving up to write an angry letter, blog post, or op-ed about NBC's chauvinistic coverage: don't bother! They're actually more above-the-fray than most. Also, their coverage is not shown anywhere except America - I know, it's because I can't get it that I'm watching Women's Air Pistol - so can't ruffle feathers elsewhere.
Considering all the different ways in which China has interacted with the world in the last 50 years, considering all the challenges ordinary Chinese people have to put up with, it's beneficial and, and, by any rational standard, non-threatening to have national energies channeled into this kind of competition. It's touching to see so many ordinary Chinese crowds cheering for their new heroes.
Every previous era looks innocent.
Contrary to what you might think, China's economy is relatively less efficient, and more polluting, than those of rich countries.
Make the important interesting.
Successful societies-those which progress economically and politically and can control the terms on which they deal with the outside world-succeed because they have found ways to match individual self-interest to the collective good.
Societies are healthiest when their radius of trust is broad and when people feel they can influence their own fate.
Racial prejudice boils down to the deeply anti-American message that some people are born to fail.
It is not widely known that, ever since the end of the Korean War, the United States has spent essentially the same amount of money on defense, in real terms, every single year.
According to the Office of Technology Assessment, 3 Minuteman missiles and 7 Poseidon missiles could destroy 73 percent of oil-refining capacity in the Soviet Union.
Up or out" greatly magnified the careerist emphasis on holding a position rather than doing a job.
The worst kind of management seeks a single optimum, a one-scale index of efficiency, like the mindless scales of 1 to 10 for grading a woman's beauty or one to four stars for a movie's appeal.