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The Long View

The Long View 2009-01-09: Hillary Taking Names; Stratfor is Optimistic; The Union of the West

John J. Reilly speculates here about a Holy Roman Empire style arrangement for world government: not a state, but a system of dispensing justice. Such a system would preserve the genuine benefits of international cooperation, but avoid directly ruling the various states within in it. Hillary Taking Names; Stratfor is

The Long View 2008-01-08: Self-Piloted Vehicles; Slaves & Servants; FDR on the Volga; Ceausescu in New Hampshire

John J. Reilly correctly notes the value of self-driving cars, especially the urbanist’s dream of eliminating parking from the city, although he didn’t phrase it that way. However, it is very funny to me to read this optimistic forecast from GM about how they could field autonomous cars

The Long View 2008-01-04: Lizards, Airships, Caucuses

Airships of all varieties are one of those things that seem to provide endless clickbait, as the relatively recent article I linked in the image demonstrates. Nothing of note has happened in the intervening years to make airships a thing again, but articles about it are hardy perennials. Whenever you

The Long View 2008-01-03: Warren on Dynasties; Sarkozy on God; Steyn on Trial; Nations on the Downslope

There is a fascinating bit here at the end of John J. Reilly’s blog post about how current “independence” movements are always really “dependence“ movements, as the states in question never have any ability to function or defend themselves without a more powerful sponsor. This can happen recursively, for

The Long View 2008-01-01: Happy New Year: Thanks & Advisories; The Mark of Soros; Uninformed Predictions

And so we come to a new year of John J. Reilly’s blog. As was usual for John on New Year’s Day, he issued some predictions. His 2008 predictions were unusually bad: The subprime-loan question is starting to look like the Enron scandal: an important story that has

The Long View: Bhutto Assassination; the Speech & Silence of Hillary Clinton; Catholic England; Spelling Upgrade

With hindsight, it would appear that Mark Steyn’s comment, quoted here by John J. Reilly, that the prime ministership of Benazir Bhutto was an anachronism was entirely accurate. The secular, liberal movements that her family represented were the dream of the mid-twentieth century West, but the rest of the

The Long View 2007-12-24: Merry Christmas!

John J. Reilly lays out an argument here that religious tolerance in the United States doesn’t really have a neutral point of view as to what constitutes “religion”: First, we should recall that religious toleration, at least in the Anglo-American tradition, is the legal embodiment of a Protestant notion