Kosovo 2: Four C’s on the Wall: The Symbol I Saw but Didn’t Understand

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I remember seeing it painted on buildings as we moved through Bosnia and Kosovo—a cross surrounded by four strange C-shaped marks. I knew it meant something Serbian; I didn’t realize somebody had managed to cram centuries of Byzantium, Orthodox Christianity, Ottoman conquest, Kosovo, nationalism and war into four little squiggles. The Serbian cross and its famous motto, “Only Unity Saves the Serbs,” taught me something I wouldn’t fully appreciate until years later: American soldiers arrived in the Balkans carrying maps, but the people who lived there were carrying centuries of memory.

History Isn’t Safe—And That’s the Point: Why Modern Revisionism & Censorship Weakens Classic Literature

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Amid the noise of judging yesterday on today’s morals, a far more pervasive and intellectually dishonest form of censorship is being overlooked: the ongoing sanitization of historical fiction and classic literature.

3D Chess: Who is controlling the Board?

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Game theory is mankind’s invention of 3D chess—the realization that rational players can make moves that look completely irrational when you can’t see the whole board. But American geopolitics adds another dimension: time. Presidents get four or eight years. Institutions, alliances, armies, intelligence agencies, bureaucracies, and strategic interests can endure for generations. So perhaps the real question isn’t simply, “Who runs America?” It’s more interesting than that: Who keeps playing after everyone else leaves the table? Because the biggest mistake in 3D chess may not be misunderstanding the move. It may be misunderstanding who the players actually are.

Changes

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Baby-boomers and their now adult children, due to their sheer numbers, have created the greatest sustained economic boom in history. The demand they created for consumer goods spawned whole industries to service their egocentricity including, but not limited to: credit purchases, electronics, up-scale vacations, and healthcare. Contrary to previous generations, they seem impervious to inflation – gas five bucks/gallon – so what? Their powerful ramifications have kept the USA a world leader.

Kosovo 1: The Bottle, the Battle, and the Bombers: Why Kosovo Was Never Just 1999

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When NATO started bombing Yugoslavia in 1999, most Americans discovered Kosovo approximately fifteen minutes before forming an opinion about it. The problem was that the people actually living there had been fighting over its history for roughly 600 years. From the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 and the Ottoman world of Vlad the Impaler, through Tito’s Yugoslavia and one bizarre, politically explosive glass-bottle incident in 1985, Kosovo accumulated centuries of grievances before the first NATO bomb fell. American troops arrived carrying rifles, radios, maps and rules of engagement. The Balkans were waiting with six centuries of history.

Fifth Columns Are Operating in America, Part I

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Foreign influence, ideological networks, and institutional capture

Merriam-Webster defines a “fifth column” in its original, literal sense: “a group of secret sympathizers or supporters of an enemy that engage in espionage or sabotage within defense lines or national borders.” That is a high bar (i.e., hidden agents under foreign direction with actions timed to a military objective), and almost nothing discussed in American politics today clears it.

Kimberly Guilfoyle: What Profits a Woman to Gain the World and Lose Her Soul?

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Kimberly Guilfoyle has spent decades surrounded by fame, wealth, beauty, and political power. From Gavin Newsom’s wife to Fox News celebrity to Trump’s ambassador to Greece, her journey raises an uncomfortable biblical question: What profits a woman to gain the whole world and lose her soul? As new financial allegations emerge, perhaps it’s time to revisit what Jesus taught about the love of money. I hope she finds redemption, because heaven doesn’t accept American Express.