I am an optimist. I believe in freedom, innovation, openness, capitalism and the Internet. I can't get enough of the blood sport of politics. For fun, I play with new designs for my websites (located at www.patrickruffini.com). I just graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, but my hope is to never stop learning about the things that fascinate me: electoral politics, the tech revolution, and… Read more
I am an optimist. I believe in freedom, innovation, openness, capitalism and the Internet. I can't get enough of the blood sport of politics. For fun, I play with new designs for my websites (located at www.patrickruffini.com). I just graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, but my hope is to never stop learning about the things that fascinate me: electoral politics, the tech revolution, and helping people escape the chains of dependency and pessimism and to draw confidence from themselves and the world around them. I live in Philadelphia, a very underrated city.
Reviews
New Reviewer Rank: 242,023 (Learn More) - Total Helpful Votes: 717 of 833
After reading David Frum's The Right Man, I'm a bit at a loss as to what the fuss was all about. Not to ruin the surprise, but all the Bush-critical quotes you've heard are all that you'll find in the book. By and large, the portrait the book paints of the President and those who toil for him is balanced and respectful, and judging by the apoplectic reviews by the "Saddam isn't evil, but Ashcroft is" contingent, it's annoying all the usual suspects. Good.
In this book, Frum styles himself as a unreconstructed Gingrichite (albeit one largely unmoved by the social issue agenda). Frum supported Bush, not McCain, in the primaries, thus setting him apart from his fellow neoconservatives. But… Read more
Supreme Command is a compelling and innovative argument for a contrarian point of view. Cohen impels the reader to put aside everything one has ever thought about civil-military relations, and to focus on the lessons of history. He argues that effective civilian command almost always adds immeasurably to the value of a military campaign. What's more, Cohen is willing to defend this argument wherever it takes him, even when he is rejecting the "conservative" critique of Vietnam as a war fought "with one hand tied behind [the military's] back" and when he defends seemingly ineffective moves like LBJ's bombing halts and the hunt for Scud missiles during the Gulf War as politically… Read more
William Manchester's first Churchill volume covers the first fifty eight years of Winston's life. His second, "Alone," covers just eight. Assuming that there will be a third, it will cover the final quarter century, including most of World War II and Churchill's two spells as Prime Minister. To the elementary observer, these divisions seem somewhat out of sorts.
It's only by reading that middle volume that we understand just how critical those eight years were. Above all, "Alone" is a morality play -- the best one I know -- about what happens when democracies fail to confront aggression. At no other time in the 20th Century were so many people so wrong about a matter as grave as the Nazi… Read more
