collects...everything from presidential addresses and diplomatic cables to political cartoons and song lyrics. It encompasses various phases of American diplomatic history that are typically treated separately, such as the First World War, the Cold War, and 9/11. The book presents the perspectives of elite policymakers--presidents, secretaries of state, generals, and diplomats--alongside those of other kinds of Americans, such as newspaper columnists, clergymen, songwriters, poets, and novelists. It also features numerous documents from other countries...
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Shouldn’t every leader read Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” for its studies in the dangers of tyranny and betrayal and hubristic ambition, as well as the power and limits of rhetoric? Of course it’s also a pleasure to read, chock-full of great speeches and sweet turns of phrase that seem to comment on every facet of human existence.— Chang-rae Lee
I have often reminded myself I would not be where I am today were it not for the courage of dissidents like Dr. King, who were spied upon by their own government...And, as President, a President who looks at intelligence every morning, I also can’t help but be reminded that America must be vigilant in the face of threats.
'the fact is that the United States maintains more that six hundred bases around the world, and it spends more on its military than almost all other countries combined. For the foreseeable future, there is no prospect of it reversing course, slashing the military budget, and returning to splendid isolation. Still, the larger point holds. Obama was reminding the world that for now, at least, the days of the United States engaging in foreign adventurism, and using the Pentagon to pursue political crusades, are over. In concert with others, America will do its bit for defending liberal values and preventing mass killings by repressive regimes, but its main focus will be on protecting its own economic and strategic interests. And if anybody wants to challenge that policy stance, they will have to talk to the U.S. public.'
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All the entertainers, it is time for us to stand up now and renew this dream.
Jamie Foxx, speaking in Washington DC today. He named
Will Smith, Jay Z, Kerry Washington, Kanye West and others...who should lead a call to action. Diverting from his prepared remarks, Foxx cited the Trayvon Martin case as well as the Newtown massacre as giving him inspiration to speak out.
“It’s an opportunity...to recall where we once were in this nation,” Oprah said, noting that Martin Luther King forced America “to wake up, look at itself and eventually change.”
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Pres. Obama will speak on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to observe the anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on Aug. 28 — 50 years to the day after one of the march’s organizers, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., delivered his “I Have a Dream’’ speech.
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The President’s Trayvon talk, and its generally positive response, represents the narrowing of the gap between the public and private Obama. The caution that grew out of his status as the first black President, which one close aide described to me as “the President’s inability to swing at certain pitches” before being reëlected, made it harder to confront social issues that have engaged him deeply since he was a young man.
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art: painting by Rodney Jackson
...imagine a future where potential candidates study...Clinton’s impressive post-Presidency income (more than a hundred million dollars in speaking fees alone) and add that to the calculus as they contemplate whether to run for the highest office in the land.
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art: photo by Peter Yang
Obama ended his speech...'We should also have confidence that kids these days, I think, have more sense than we did back then, and certainly more than our parents did or our grandparents did; and that along this long, difficult journey, we’re becoming a more perfect union—not a perfect union, but a more perfect union.' As someone in my grandfather’s generation might say, If the Lord is willing and the creek don’t rise.
Matthew McKnight, at the New Yorker
As President Benigno Aquino prepared to give the State of Nation address, protesters marched to the heavily guarded House of Representatives where the speech was to take place, clashing with anti-riot squads. At least 15 were injured as protesters demanded jobs...
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It is always expensive for Obama to affirm his identity as an African American, and so his representation of African American experience and perspective on the Zimmerman trial...came couched in qualifiers...It was straight talk wrapped in apophasis—'saying by not saying,' or saying what I say I shouldn't say: That African Americans still encounter reflexive prejudice in their daily lives, that American justice is still far from colorblind, that we are still collectively failing African American inner city youth. That's not a departure for Obama. His dominant mental reflex is to balance countervailing facts, on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand...All the more so when he gets personal...this time, the personal was in a pronoun—not 'I,' the politician's favorite, but 'we,' as in 'we African Americans.' Obama...has not often, when addressing the whole nation, used the pronoun 'we' in reference to himself and African Americans...He did so [this time] sparingly—in just one sentence actually—in the account...of the painful experience he shares with the African American community. Somehow, that 'we' renders Obama more vulnerable (to my ear) than the more familiar first-person references to his own experiences of white fear.
Andrew Sprung, at XPOSTFACTOID
The words, spoken in a hushed Pretoria court room, are painstakingly pronounced, each phrase separated from the next. "I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities." The rustling of a turning page, then the sentence that still sends shivers..."It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die." Nelson Mandela’s final phrase is no meaningless throwaway. He and his nine co-accused were standing trial for multiple counts of sabotage.
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