Valkyrie

Claus von Stauffenberg was a Nazi army officer who attempted unsuccessfully to assassinate Hitler at the Wolf’s Lair on July 20, 1944. Stauffenberg was shot the next day as a result. The Nazis did not surrender until May 7, 1945, a few months shy of a year later, so Stauffenberg’s intent to end the war would have made a substantial difference in terms of the number of dead and wounded from World War II in Europe. The 2008 film, Valkyrie, chronicles the story in the genre of historical fiction, even though Tom Cruise, Bill Nighy, Kenneth Branagh, and Tom Wilkinson play Nazi figures (without even German accents), although Tom Hollander does play a suspicious Nazi quite convincingly. Viewers could still be excused for approaching the film as a “Wagner meets Shakespeare in the Park” production. The film gets its title from the Valkyrie in Wagner’s opus: handmaidens of the gods. The sparce religious nomenclature in a few scenes of the film is easy to miss, and, I submit, the interlarding of religion is ill-suited to the political drama.

The full essay is at "Valkyrie."

Georgia and Georgia: Aspiring and Settled States

While one Georgia was secure as a member-state in the U.S., another Georgia was finding itself being frozen out of not only accession talks with the E.U., but also being invited as a “NATO partner” to attend the NATO meeting in June, 2026. It is ironic that whereas the first Georgia had delegated some of its sovereignty to the U.S. in 1789, the second Georgia was unhappy remaining fully sovereign outside of the E.U. rather than as one of the semi-sovereign E.U. states. Giving up some governmental sovereignty can be a “step up,” and, with that comes certain requirements in terms of good governance.

The full essay is at "Georgia and Georgia." 

The Declaration of Independence at 250

Ahead of the 250^th anniversary of the signing of a Declaration of Independence by representatives, or delegates, from thirteen British colonies in North American, a rare copy was discovered at the British government’s archives. Besides the obvious irony, how the copy had come into the possession of the British is a reminder of just how much the rebelling colonists risked by taking on the mighty British Empire. Although the task of actually achieving political independence must have seemed formidable, the political elites on both sides “of the pond” (i.e., the Atlantic Ocean) had already grasped the inherent instability in there being an empire within an empire, for an empire as a political category or type consists of kingdom-level polities rather than empires. The British Empire had run aground in terms of the logic, and the American Revolution can be interpreted as a working-out of the illogic.

The full essay is at "The Declaration of Independence at 250."

E.U. Emergency Assistance to Venezuela: Coordinating Federalism

Whereas when the U.S. responds to natural disasters abroad, the resources of all 50 states are combined in a federal-level response, the E.U.’s Civil Protection Mechanism limits the federal level to coordination and instead relies on the states to deploy resources, including personal. I contend that the European arrangement is more in keeping with federalism than is the federal-only arrangement of the Americans. Moreover, involvement at both federal and state levels reflects and facilitates one of the benefits of federalism, wherein each level has the strength to act as a check on the other. Programs in which the federal level coordinates and the state governments deploy can help keep a federal system from lapsing into a “one-size-fits-all” consolidated rather than federal system. The U.S. could stand to take a lesson in this respect.

The full essay is at "E.U. Emergency Assistance to Venezuela."

E.U. States and US Economies Compared Economically

Even in reporting and analyzing seemingly-objective economic data for comparative purposes, political ideology can creep in if that instinctual urge is powerful enough. Even in comparisons of political entities that are on the same level (e.g., city, region/province, kingdom, empire), “word-games” can be used to suggest that the republics being compared are on different political levels. The use of linguistic subterfuge is, I submit, underhanded and based on a stubborn refusal to admit to oneself that the two or more political entities being compared are indeed on the same level, rather than one being higher than the other. In the case of comparing GDP and GDP per capita between E.U. and U.S. states, the very fact that the states are being compared to each other, rather than a state in one union to another union (as if a state in one political union were equivalent to another union of states—a category mistake to be sure!), means that the respective states are in fact equivalent even though different labels are used according to whether a given state is in one union or another. In arguing these points, I shall juxtaposition the respective labels to highlight the absurdity of using different labels for ideological purposes.

The full essay is at "E.U. States and U.S. Economies Compared Economically."

Is the E.U. in the U.S.'s Strategic Interest?

Is a more perfect Union in Europe in America’s national interest? On the American holiday in 2026 that principally honors George Washington, whose eight-year commitment as the military commander-in-chief to the cause of freedom for the 13 new sovereign republics that had been members of the British Empire (and would forge a comparable political Union[1]) was decisive, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited the E.U. state of Hungary to deliver “a message of support from the Trump administration to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán,” who was behind in the polls in his re-election campaign.[2] At their press conference, Orbán and Rubio “signed an agreement on energy cooperation and hailed what they described as a ‘golden age’ of bilateral relations.”[3] E.U. officials were nowhere in sight; it was as if Hungary were still a sovereign state rather than a semi-sovereign E.U. state. An implicit question untreated by the media in the E.U. or U.S. is whether bilateral relations between the U.S. and individual E.U. states, as if the E.U. were nonexistent, was still in the U.S. national interest, especially in the context of Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

The full essay is at "Is the E.U. in the U.S.'s Strategic Interest?"

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1. Skip Worden, British Colonies Forge an American Empire: A Basis for Trans-Atlantic Comparisons (Seattle: Amazon Books, 2017).
2. Sandor Zsiros, “’We Want You to Continue’: Rubio Delivers Trump’s Campaign Message to Orbán in Budapest,” Euronews.com, 16 February, 2026.
3. Ibid.

Oh, Siagon

War can leave families in a dysfunctional condition. In the case of the Vietnam War, the broadcast video of the last helicopter taking off from the roof of the American embassy in Siagon in 1974 carries with it the veneer of fleeing Vietnamese on their way to a life of freedom in the United States. Not evident from the video is the impact on a Vietnamese family that is documented in the film, Oh, Siagon (2007).

The full essay is at "Oh, Siagon."

Bulgaria: From the Lion to the Euro

Just weeks after the government of the E.U. state of Bulgaria resigned amid protests against the rampant corruption, the state traded in its currency, the levs, which means lion, for the federal currency, the euro. In the new year, 2026, Bulgaria stood to relieve holders of the state’s debt and to tame the endemic inflation that has plagued the state’s economy. In November, 2025, for example, food prices had risen by 5% year-on-year, “more than double the eurozone average.”[1] The term “eurozone” is actually problematic, as it, like the application of the jargon, “bloc,” to the E.U. itself is meant to obfuscate readers regarding the genre of the political, federal union. To claim that Bulgaria joined a currency zone is inferior stating that the state adopted the federal currency. Stated properly, the currencies in the E.U. can be compared with those that were in the early U.S., and all of those combinations of state and federal currencies can be held to be compatible with federalism.

The full essay is at "Bulgaria." 

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1. Aleksandar Brezar, “Bulgaria Switches to the Euro Amid Mixed Reactions from Its Citizens,” Euronews.com, 1 January, 2026.

A Drone Wall for the E.U.: Russian Aggression Assuages Euroskeptic States

Speaking after his meeting with U.S. President Trump in Alaska during the summer of 2025, Russia’s President Putin said that if no agreement is reached with Ukraine, the force of arms would decide the matter. In other words, might makes right, or at least military incursion is a legitimate way to decide political disputes between countries. I would have hoped that such a primitive mentality would be antiquated in the twentieth century, but, alas, human nature evolves only at a glacial pace undetected within the lifespan of a human being. In September, 2025, the United Nations was under attack from within the General Assembly because of the continuance of the veto held by five countries in the Security Council; the U.S. had just vetoed a resolution for an immediate cession of Israeli destruction in Gaza. As a former deputy secretary of the UN had admitted to me during the fall of 2024, the veto itself renders the UN unreformable; a new international organization would have to be established sans vetoes for efficacy to be possible. Even so, absent a real enforcement mechanism, such as a military force, a resolution even of a vetoless organization would merely be parchment. The impotence of the UN is one reason why NATO, a defensive military transatlantic alliance, has been valuable in the face of military threats by Russia. Yet in September 2025, after Russian drones had flown into four E.U. states, E.U. President Von der Leyen felt the need to take the lead by again stressing her proposal for a drone wall along the E.U.’s eastern border; she was not deferring to any international alliance, much less to the United Nations. I submit that Von der Leyen’s initiative is yet another means by which the E.U. can be distinguished from international “blocs,” alliances, and organizations. Unlike the latter three, the E.U. has exclusive competencies and is thus semi-sovereign (and the same goes for the state governments).

The full essay is at "A Drone Wall for the E.U."

E.U. Flag Day

Both the E.U. and U.S. have their respective flag days during the month of June—on the 29^th and 14^th, respectively. This isn’t the only thing that the flags have in common, and what sets both off from the flags of the states. I contend that these similarities and difference regarding political symbols can function as markers for what both unions are as complex polities of polities even as ideologies seek to obfuscate and dissimilate, even dismissing or ignoring the history of both unions. In other words, flags don’t lie; people do.

The full essay is at "E.U. Flag Day."

October 12th: Happy Vikings Day!

I contend that the ideological war being waged in the United States by the 2010s over whether October 12^th should be “Indigenous People’s” Day or Columbus Day became real in 2021 when President Biden issued a proclamation commemorating “Indigenous People’s” Day not coincidentally to fall on the same day as Columbus Day. Similarly, though only unofficially, the United American Indians of New England have labeled Thanksgiving Day as “The National Day of Mourning” since 1970. The de facto hegemony of ideology in changing official U.S. holidays, including in the refusal of some people and even businesses to say “Christmas” even on Christmas Eve Day, has proceeded without the premise that ideology should play such a role being debated in public discourse. Instead, the onslaught has been enabled by the vehemence of the conquerors in insisting that their decisions be recognized and not contradicted. Once I went to a Unitarian “church” on a Thanksgiving expecting a spirit of gratefulness, as per President Lincoln’s proclamation establishing the date of the holiday after two years of brutal war between the CSA and USA. The sermon was instead on the need for sorrow instead. I walked out, shaking my head in utter disbelief. Perhaps some Americans might one day insist that a similar mood be preached in churches on Christmas Day. Both the need and insistence come with a tone of passive aggression, and are indeed power-grabs based in resentment, which Nietzsche argued is a major indication of weakness rather than strength, and thus self-confidence. Perhaps the manufactured dialectics, such as the one centered on October 12^th, can be transcended in a Hegelian rather than religious sense at a higher level.

The full essay is at "October 12th: Happy Vikings Day."

Cancelled Classes: Harvard’s Far-Left Ideological Courses Take a Hit

I contend that the more courses that are heavily ideological and biased in advocating a particular ideology that a university has, the higher the chances that a university will eventually suffer from a lack of educational legitimacy and perhaps even have to close down for want of students. Even great American universities such as Harvard and Yale are not immune. Their huge endowments could even function as organizational slack enabling a particular ideological bent to percolate throughout the universities for a long time with impunity due to the sheer amount of money in the universities respective invested wealth. When I was a student at Yale, I worked part-time at the Development Office calling alumni to give to the already-wealthy university. I had no idea at the time that being rich could actually harm a university, or allow for educational decadence with impunity. At Harvard in 2024, there was some indication that the students’ freedom in selecting some of their courses was serving a good purpose in putting biased-ideological courses out of business for lack of sufficient enrollment. The student marketplace could substitute for compromised university administration in its educational oversight function. Adam Smith would be proud.

The full essay is at "Cancelled Classes at Harvard." 

Turkey on Cyprus: Sidelining the E.U.

Imagine if Japan had invaded and claimed (and successfully held) an island of Hawaii as a protectorate and a separate country due to the number of Japanese living there, and thus not as a part of Hawaii even though the U.S. recognizes all of Hawaii as a member state.  Let’s say furthermore that the UN has proposed the unification of Hawaii as a republic composed of two federated states. Hawaii would be akin to Belgium in the E.U.—a federated state of two sub-states in a federal union. This arrangement would fit with Althusius’ early seventeenth-century theory of federalism based on the Holy Roman Empire: each level of political organization is a federation. While this exists in the E.U., none of the U.S. states is itself a federation of states. So, the UN’s proposal that Cyprus be united politically and be composed of two states even as the E.U. already recognizes the entire island as an E.U. state is not outlandish to a European eye. The problem with the proposal lies instead in Turkey, and this in itself can be interpreted as an argument against Turkey’s accession to E.U. statehood.

The full essay is at "Turkey on Cyprus: Sidelining the E.U."

Democracy Waning in Former French Colonies in Africa

The subversion of democracy in former French colonies in Africa stymies the African Union from developing from a mere confederation, wherein all of the governmental sovereignty resides with the states, to modern federalism, whose chief characteristic is dual sovereignty. There is good reason for the requirement in the U.S. that the states be republics rather than dictatorships, for the latter would be more likely to ignore the federal jurisdiction within their respective states.

The full essay is at "Democracy Waning in Africa."

Exfoliating a Hero: On Lincoln's Unconstitutional Overreaching

Lest we get carried away and inadvertantly enshrine our leaders with mythic laurals, it is worthwhile to peel back our societal "remembering" of past figures, such as Abraham Lincoln, who have become larger than life.

The full essay is at "Exfoliating a Hero."

Medium Cool

In Medium Cool (1969), John Cassellis, a cameraman, maintains a medium-cool level of emotion even in the midst of the socio-political turmoil in Chicago during 1968 until he learns that his station manager had been allowing the FBI access to the news footage. The film can be interpreted as providing a justification for his lack of trust in American law enforcement even as the need for law and order is made clear from the ubiquity of the human instinctual urge of aggression. For the film shows not only the extent of violence, but also its engrained nature in our species. By implication, the viewer is left to conclude that that law enforcement is necessary in a civilized society.  Yet this can only be a necessary evil, for the last few scenes of the film show just how likely discretion is to be abused. The atrocious and one-sided police violence during the peaceful protests outside of the Democratic National Convention make it clear that if given the legal authority to use weapons, human beings may abuse such discretion if too weak to restrain their own personal passions and, albeit less common, even their psychological pathologies.

The full essay is at "Medium Cool."

Yale's Original Sin

I take it as a matter of divine justice that redemption can elude a convenient, belated atonement, especially if the atoning individual or institution does not really grasp the root of the original sin and thus the sin continues under other manifestations even though admittedly they may be less severe. I contend that when Peter Salovey, Yale University’s president, apologized on behalf of the Yale Corporation for having oppressed two Black men nearly two centuries earlier, he was not aware of the university’s underlying exaggerated fixation on the insider/outsider dichotomy that was still salient in 2023. To be sure, Nietzsche wrote that the strong should maintain a pathos of distance from the weak, lest the latter beguile the former into voluntarily renouncing their innate strength. Kant distinguished intimacy from difference as together making up the dialectic of attraction and distance. When a customer with the strength of having money naturally distances oneself from a rude employee of a retail company who is resentful, such distance is hardly artificial. Yet when a university whose administrators and faculty feel the emotional need to distance themselves qua insiders from outsiders to such an extent that even alumni who return to campus to work on academic projects, such as writing a book, are relegated as outsiders—hence not “members of the community”—then the distancing stems from a rather unnatural pathology. I contend that such a pathology still plagued Yale like an invisible blanket in 2023, almost two-hundred years after that university had refused to allow two black auditors to speak in courses at Yale’s theological seminary (divinity school). That original sin, although atoned for, still ran through Yale’s puffed-up veins in 2023, hence intimacy and strength continued quite naturally to elude that university—the redemption of which would require more of a mirror than an apology to two dead Black auditors could provide. Although Yale appeared in 2023 to be self-confident to external stakeholders and the general public, Nietzsche’s advice applied to people considering coming or giving to Yale nonetheless: The strong should not get too close to weak, resentful birds of prey just as a healthy person should not go to a hospital lest  even such a person becomes sick too.

The full essay is at "Yale's Original Sin."

The Electoral College: Beyond the Conventional Wisdom

The matter of how the U.S. President is to be selected was a tough nut for the delegates in the Constitutional Convention in 1787 to crack. Mason observed the following in convention, “In every Stage of the Question relative to the Executive, the difficulty of the subject and the diversity of the opinions concerning it have appeared.”[1] The alternative proposals centered around the Congress, State legislatures, the governors, the people, and electors designated for the specific purpose as the possible determiners. Although the delegates were men of considerable experience, their best judgments about how the alternatives would play out were subject to error as well as the confines of their times. In re-assessing the Electoral College, we could do worse than adjust those judgments and rid them of circumstances pertaining to them that no longer apply. For example, the Southern States no longer have slaves, so the question of whether those States would be disadvantaged by going with a popular vote no longer applies; the alternative of going with the popular vote nationwide no longer suffers from that once-intractable pickle. Yet lest we rush headlong into a popular vote without respect to the States, we are well advised not to dismiss the points made by the convention delegates, for we too are constrained by our times, and we may thus not be fully able to take into account points that have been forgotten.

The full essay is at "The Electoral College."

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1. James Madison, Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787 Reported by James Madison (New York: W. W. Norton, 1966): 370.

Inconvenient Truths

When I was a post-doctoral student, I sat in on a course on German films during World War II. The instructor was an 80 year-old German man whose parents had been forced into sending him to a Hitler Youth camp. I asked him once whether he had seen Hitler in person, and, if so, did he look like how the documentaries have him pictured. Having the respect for knowledge that should be expected from a scholar, he told me that he had indeed seen Hitler in person. The brutal Nazi dictator was authentically smiling during his visit to the Hitler youth.  I was surprised, as I had been brought up with the image of the grizzled grins and terse glares.  To be sure, the victor’s history fits the horrendous crimes committed, but at the cost of objectivity, which any historian should value. The subjective historical portrayal and the German professor’s honest answer led me to wonder what Hitler was really like as a person. Even the epitaph of monster does not fit with the notion of the banality of evil visible at the Eichmann trial in 1961. Eichmann had been responsible for making the trains run on time to the concentration camps.

About a decade after my conversations with the German professor, I met a 92 year-old American veteran of World War II.  Did the American people know of the holocaust? I asked. Only after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, he answered. Before the U.S. went to war, the European war was something far away. When the U.S. was at war in Europe and Asia, Jewish leaders in Europe asked President Roosevelt to bomb the train tracks that were carrying the cattle-cars to the ovens. Roosevelt, the veteran said, told the Jews that he didn’t have time for that. “Wow, that’s a story!” I said in astonishment. One of the veteran’s daughters asked him how he knew this. “It was common knowledge at the time,” he replied. I had not even known that the American public knew of the gas chambers before the liberation of the camps. Even if Roosevelt wanted to be focused on military objectives because achieving them would mean winning the war, that he felt he didn’t have time to thwart the Nazis from transporting human beings to ovens astonishes me. I asked the veteran if the very language, cattle-cars to ovens applied to human beings shocked Americans during the war. He replied that “surprised” is not the right word for it. He did not characterize how he and other Americans had taken the news, which I found interesting.

The full essay is at "Inconvenient Truths."

U.S. President Trump’s Spending on a Border Wall: Federalism at Risk?

U.S. President Trump announced in February of 2019 that he would fully fund a wall on the U.S.’s southern border. He would first use the $1.375 granted by Congress to be followed by  $600 million from a Treasury Department asset-foreclosure fund for law enforcement, $2.5 billion from a military anti-drug account, and $3.6 billion in military construction funds.[1] The president’s rationale hinged on his declaration of a national emergency due to illegal immigration, drug-traffic, and crime/gangs—all having been coming across the border on a regular basis. In federal court, sixteen of the U.S.’s member-states challenged the president’s declaration and use of funds. The U.S. president’s legal authority to declare national emergencies was pitted against the authority of the U.S. House of Representatives to be the initiator of federal spending legislation. The House therefore had standing to sue. The question of the states’ legal standing is another matter. It is particularly interesting because it involved not only whether a given state would be harmed by the wall or even the president’s use of other funding sources that could otherwise be used for other projects in the states not directly affected by the wall, but also because federalism itself could be negatively affected in a way that harms all of the states.

The full essay is at "Spending on a Border Wall: Federalism at Risk?"

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1. Charlie Savage and Robert Pear, “States’ Lawsuit Aims to Thwart Emergency Bid,” The New York Times, February 19, 2019.