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Doug Sosnik is an old Clinton hand and one of the smartest people alive on the subject of politics. This week he sat down for a long interview with Bill Kristol and it is powerfully illuminating.

we are currently living through a chaotic era in American life.1 Sosnik believes that this moment began in 1992, which featured both Pat Buchanan’s insurgent campaign against H.W. Bush and Ross Perot’s populist third party campaign, which got 19 percent of the vote

It wasn’t until 2000 that the true nature of the chaos started coming into focus. Trumpism is best understood as an extension—not the culmination—of that trend.

Behind the strikes, inflation numbers and talk of all the difficult decisions politicians have to make are a multitude of trapped people, their choices shrinking. People in bad relationships who cannot leave because rents and mortgages have gone up so being single is no longer viable. People who would like to have a child, or another child, but cannot afford its care, or who would like to return to work after having a child but the sums just don’t work. People in bad jobs with no security or benefits who cannot quit and look for alternatives because they have no savings to buffer rising costs. The end result is a crisis not just of the economy, but of freedom.

With that crisis, an entire liberal ambition becomes thwarted. We talk of liberalism in grand abstract terms, as the noble heart of an ideal political order that promotes human rights, the rule of law, civil liberties and freedom from religious dogma and prejudice

But when economic arrangements themselves become coercive and abusive, then political liberalism can coexist with, and indeed mask, a state of illiberalism and bondage. In the throes of personal challenges, lofty political ideals feel remote and irrelevant. All that people like Jane and others have the time or energy to register is a set of invisible oppressive economic forces that simply must be weathered because they are facts of nature

The ceremony belatedly jolted Germany into reappraising Merkel’s role in the years leading up to today’s European crises—and the verdict has not been positive.

Merkel’s critics argue that the close ties she forged with Russia are partly responsible for today’s economic and political upheaval. Germany’s security policies over the past year have been, in many ways, a repudiation of her legacy. Earlier this month, Berlin announced a new $3 billion military aid package to support Ukraine in its fight against Russia, and an approaching NATO summit is expected to discuss how to include Ukraine in Europe’s security architecture—an extension of the alliance that Merkel consistently resisted.

Merkel was a key architect of the agreements that made the economies of Germany and its neighbors dependent on Russian energy imports. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has destroyed that strategic partnership, forcing Germany to find its oil and natural gas elsewhere at huge costs to business, government and households.

Experts say those books are likely just the tip of a fast-growing iceberg of AI-written content spreading across the web as new language software allows anyone to rapidly generate reams of prose on almost any topic. From product reviews to recipes to blog posts and press releases, human authorship of online material is on track to become the exception rather than the norm.

Semrush, a leading digital marketing firm, recently surveyed its customers about their use of automated tools. Of the 894 who responded, 761 said they’ve at least experimented with some form of generative AI to produce online content, while 370 said they now use it to help generate most if not all of their new content, according to Semrush Chief Strategy Officer Eugene Levin.

What that may mean for consumers is more hyper-specific and personalized articles — but also more misinformation and more manipulation, about politics, products they may want to buy and much more.

if you have a viable military, and you make mistakes on the battlefield, and you have a culture of learning, and growing and changing, and adapting to your mistakes and turning things around, then I'd say, "Yeah, okay. You don't want to give any secrets to the Russians because they want to adapt."

This is the example of Israel in the 1973 war in the Middle East. They adapted when they were initially defeated. So, good armies can do that, but Russia is not a good army. It is so corrupt, and it is so debased by their political leaders, and their senior leaders, you would literally have to replace everyone, and start a training process for both officers and sergeants, noncommissioned officers, as we call them.

you just don't fix an army overnight, especially when it has the morale problems that the Russian army has now, when it has the equipment and leadership problems, what they have. And, when there is so much corruption at the ministerial level, the senior general level at the top in Mr. Putin.

Gibraltar Preservation Group – a limited liability company of which Drake Cattermole and David Carpenter are principals – has owned the 6-acre property since 2010. The two spent the following years amassing adjacent parcels to propose a financially viable rehabilitation project for the historic property.

During that time, the mansion sat vacant and deteriorated, an aspect that opponents of redeveloping the historic property have pushed to the forefront in their arguments.Local developer Robert Snowberger, of 9SDC – a Wilmington-based historic preservation contractor – introduced plans in February to turn the Gibraltar mansion into a boutique hotel, renovate the greenhouse and garage into restaurant and retail space, and build townhomes on vacant land surrounding the property.

“All would be subject to appropriate restrictive covenants to ensure against unwanted commercial uses,” he wrote. “The city will contract with 9SDC to act as developer of the site, most especially because they have been integral to negotiations with the owner entity, because they have been deeply involved with securing the vitally needed historic tax credits and because they have experience with restoration of historic properties.”

Putin is preparing to invade Ukraine again—or pretending he will invade Ukraine again—for the same reason. He wants to destabilize Ukraine, frighten Ukraine. He wants Ukrainian democracy to fail. He wants the Ukrainian economy to collapse. He wants foreign investors to flee. He wants his neighbors—in Belarus, Kazakhstan, even Poland and Hungary—to doubt whether democracy will ever be viable, in the longer term, in their countries too.

Farther abroad, he wants to put so much strain on Western and democratic institutions, especially the European Union and NATO, that they break up.

He wants to undermine America, to shrink American influence, to remove the power of the democracy rhetoric that so many people in his part of the world still associate with America. He wants America itself to fail.

Preface

“No teacher can doubt that his real task is to assist his pupil to fulfill human nature against all the deforming forces of convention and prejudice.” p. 20

A liberal education is one that helps students to ask themselves and answer the question, “what is man?… In our chronic lack of certainty, this comes down to knowing the alternative answers [to that question] and thinking about them.” p. 21

You’ve probably noticed that policies once dismissed out of hand — from “Medicare for all” to a 70 percent top tax rate; from sweeping action on climate change to abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement — are being discussed in mainstream circles now. The Overton window is a useful way to understand what’s happening.

The key is that shifts begin with the public. Mr. Overton argued that the role of organizations like his own was not to lobby politicians to support policies outside the window, but to convince voters that policies outside the window should be in it. If they are successful, an idea derided as unthinkable can become so inevitable that it’s hard to believe it was ever otherwise.

“Public officials cannot enact any policy they please like they’re ordering dessert from a menu,” Mr. Lehman said in an interview. “They have to choose from among policies that are politically acceptable at the time. And we believe the Overton window defines that range of ideas.”