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PEPFAR and the Marshall Plan, When Conservatives Defended Foreign Aid Two American aid programs, the Marshall Plan and PEPFAR, show what targeted aid can do, and the skeptics' case against aid to governments shows where it fails. Foreign Aid Is Not a Quarter of the Budget, and Other Myths Tested Foreign aid is about one percent of federal spending, not a quarter, and getting that wrong means conservatives argue the wrong case against the real problems. Ten questions families ask about adopting a child from another country Ten plain answers on treaty and federal rules for intercountry adoption, from the Hague Convention and visas to closed countries, costs and citizenship. Australia, Britain and Switzerland compared, and why none of them is America Gun-control fans cite Australia and Britain, gun-rights fans cite Switzerland. A side-by-side comparison shows why none of the three can be imported here. 1915, the Armenian genocide and the Christian peoples who perished with them The Ottoman campaign that began in 1915 destroyed Armenian, Assyrian and Greek Christian communities, and America took a century to name it. The Roosevelt Corollary Turned Monroe's Warning Into a Police Badge Roosevelt's 1904 Corollary stretched Monroe's shield into a license to police the hemisphere, and the record shows where deterrence ends and policing begins. Jeane Kirkpatrick Taught the Right to Tell Allies from Enemies A Democrat wrote the 1979 essay that reshaped Republican foreign policy, then served Reagan at the UN. Her career, her idea, and its best critics. The 1998 law that put religious persecution on America's foreign agenda The International Religious Freedom Act created a commission, an ambassador and an annual report so that persecution abroad would stay on the official record. Japan's debt is far larger than ours, so why has it not collapsed yet Japan owes more than twice its yearly output and no crisis has come. The honest reason is a set of conditions America does not share. Denmark is not socialist, and its own prime minister said so at Harvard The Nordic countries run market economies with free trade and heavy taxes on the middle class. The Nordic-model argument at its strongest, and the answer. Hundreds of Millions Still Cook Over Wood, and That Is a Moral Question Cheap, reliable power is the surest road out of poverty, so discouraging poor nations from building it carries a moral cost that climate politics rarely counts. The Senate Killed the Versailles Treaty and Conservatives Should Know Why Henry Cabot Lodge's 1919 reservations were a constitutional argument about Article X and Congress's war power, not mere isolationism. Two-Thirds of the Senate, How the Treaty Clause Was Built to Be Hard The Treaty Clause demands two-thirds of the Senate so binding promises abroad carry broad national consent, and executive agreements test that design. What Washington's Farewell Address Really Said About Foreign Entanglements Washington warned against passionate attachments and permanent alliances, not all engagement. The exact words, the fights behind them, and a fair test for NATO. John Quincy Adams Said America Does Not Go Abroad Hunting for Monsters Adams's Fourth of July address of 1821 is the founding text of the restraint tradition. The passage, its context, and how hawks and restrainers use it. Rebutting the Claim That America Created ISIS and Every Other Enemy America made real mistakes in Iraq, but the claim that it manufactured ISIS and every other enemy erases the enemies' own ideas, choices and history. The 2016 genocide finding for Yazidis and Christians under ISIS rule In March 2016 the United States formally declared that ISIS was committing genocide against Yazidis, Christians and Shia Muslims, and the record shows why. Bin Laden Declared War on America Twice Before Anyone Listened Al-Qaeda announced its war in 1996 and again in 1998, then attacked. A dated timeline from 1993 to September 11, 2001, drawn from the 9/11 Commission record. Is the Alliance with Israel a Burden or a Bargain, the Ledger Examined The aid figures critics cite are real, but a fair ledger also counts what America gets back, and the restrainer case deserves an answer on its own terms. Textbook Cold War Tales the Soviet Archives Quietly Overturned Seven common claims about the Cold War, from who started it to whether the spies mattered, tested against Venona and the documents opened after 1991. Tear Down This Wall Read Closely as the Speech Diplomats Tried to Soften Reagan's 1987 Brandenburg Gate speech read passage by passage, with the drafting history, the objections to its central line and how it read after 1989. The Night the Berlin Wall Fell and the Press Conference Slip That Opened It How a misread note at a live press conference opened the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, and why it took forty years of containment to make the slip fatal. Europe's 2015 Migrant Crisis and the Lessons It Taught Every Democracy How the 2015 surge broke the Dublin rules and reshaped European politics, and what it teaches about open-door signals, shared borders and humane limits. The Berlin Airlift Fed a City by Air for Eleven Months Without Firing a Shot In 1948 Stalin cut off West Berlin and America chose neither surrender nor war, keeping two million people alive by air and teaching a lesson in deterrence. Read the North Atlantic Treaty, All Fourteen Articles Take Ten Minutes The 1949 NATO treaty is short, plain and more modest than critics or champions say. Read it article by article, with what each clause means for the Senate. The 2014 Wales Pledge Explained, Where NATO's Two Percent Came From NATO's two percent of GDP is a guideline from a 2014 summit, with a forgotten equipment goal, not a treaty duty. Here is the text, the math and what it means. Should Conservatives Back Ukraine? Two Honest Answers, Weighed Fairly Two conservative camps answer the Ukraine question in good faith. Here are both cases at full strength, a table that compares them, and a verdict. Russia's Wars in Georgia and Crimea Were Warnings the West Chose to Ignore A dated record from Putin's 2007 Munich speech through the 2008 war and the 2014 annexation shows how muted Western responses shaped what Moscow tried next. How America Went From Importing Natural Gas to Shipping It Worldwide In a decade America built import terminals and then turned them around to export, and those cargoes serve allies and displace coal and Russian gas. Europe's Digital Services Act and the First Amendment, Side by Side Europe and Britain regulate online speech with statutes the First Amendment would not allow, and comparing them shows what American law protects. Yorktown in October 1781 and How a French Fleet Helped Trap Cornwallis Yorktown was won by a march of hundreds of miles, a naval battle few remember and a textbook siege, and it shows why alliances need clear aims. Reagan at Westminster in 1982 Predicted the Soviet Collapse Out Loud In June 1982 Reagan told Parliament that Marxism-Leninism was headed for the ash heap of history. The passages, the plan, and what came by 1991. NSC-68 and the 1950 Memo That Told America the Price of Staying Free A 1950 policy paper argued that containment without real military power was a bluff, and the argument still holds. What it said, what it cost, who objected. China Refines the Minerals Behind Every Battery, and America Let It Happen America has rare earths, lithium and copper in the ground but lets permits drag for years while China dominates processing, a strategic weakness we chose. The China shock was real, and what free traders and tariff hawks each get right Free traders cite cheap goods and tariff hawks cite lost factory towns and security. Both are right about something, and the evidence shows where. How China's Communist Party licenses churches and jails pastors China guarantees belief on paper, runs worship through state-controlled bodies and punishes believers outside them, from Christians to Falun Gong. The OPM Breach Gave a Rival Government the Files on Millions of Americans In 2015 a foreign government took the background files of about 21.5 million people. It was a counterintelligence disaster the coverage filed under tech. The NBA and China in 2019 and the Week a Tweet Cost a League Its Voice One tweet in October 2019 showed that a league loud about American politics goes quiet when a foreign market is paying. A closer look at what money buys. Made for Beijing, How the Chinese Market Changed Hollywood Scripts Studios chasing the Chinese box office edited villains, characters and flags to please censors, and American audiences pay for it. Here is what studios owe us. Xiaogang village signed a secret contract in 1978 and China began to grow Eighteen farmers risked prison to keep what they grew, and the Chinese boom that followed is the best evidence for markets that central planners ever supplied. CoCom Kept Western Technology from Moscow for Forty Years, a Model for China A forgotten committee in Paris denied the Soviet bloc Western technology for four decades, and its record answers anyone who says export controls never work. The Thucydides Trap Is a Bad Excuse for Giving Ground to Beijing The idea that a rising and a ruling power are fated for war is used to excuse appeasement, and the history behind it says the opposite. TikTok v. Garland and the Hard Clash of Free Speech and National Security The Supreme Court unanimously upheld the TikTok divestment law in January 2025, and the case shows where conservatives divide on speech and a foreign adversary. An International Tribunal Ruled Against China in 2016 and Beijing Shrugged A five-judge tribunal demolished the nine-dash line in 2016, and China ignored it, which tells us what law is worth without power behind it. When Clinton Sent Two Carrier Groups to the Taiwan Strait in 1996 The 1995-96 Taiwan Strait crisis showed the value of a show of force and taught Beijing a lesson that shaped its military buildup for decades. The Shipbuilding Gap with China Is an Industrial Story Before a Navy Story A navy is only as large as the yards that build and repair it, and a nation that stopped building commercial ships cannot surge warships. Remittances Leave the Country by the Billions. Should Washington Tax Them Conservatives split on taxing or tracking money that workers send home, so here is each side's best case and the one I find stronger. Grenada in 1983 Was Small, and It Mattered More Than the Critics Admit Operation Urgent Fury was messy and condemned at the UN, and it still rescued students, ended a coup regime and told the world America would answer. The Cartels Run Like Multinational Firms, So Policy Should Treat Them That Way Mexican cartels are diversified criminal businesses. Conservatives differ over sanctions, terrorist designation and force, and both positions get a hearing. Temporary Protected Status and the Problem of Temporary That Never Ends TPS was meant as short shelter after war or disaster. Renewed for decades, it becomes quiet permanence that Congress should settle by statute. Cuba's ration book and more than sixty years of promises at the bodega Cuba introduced its ration book in 1962 as a stopgap. Its survival across generations is the plainest verdict on the revolution, embargo included. Venezuela was once Latin America's success story, and then came socialism Venezuela sat on the largest oil reserves on earth. Two decades of nationalization, price controls and money printing turned that wealth into hunger and exodus. Seven Myths About Edmund Burke That His Fans and Critics Both Repeat Burke was a Whig, a reformer, a friend of the colonies and of Irish Catholics, and he never wrote the line about good men doing nothing. Seven claims tested. Roger Scruton Made the Love of Home a Serious Political Philosophy Scruton argued that oikophilia, the love of home, is the root of conservatism, and that it answers both the globalist and the angry nationalist. Britain's postwar socialism, from nationalized coal to the Winter of Discontent Britain won the war, nationalized its commanding heights, and by 1976 was borrowing from the IMF. How that record made the Thatcher reforms possible. Peel and Disraeli Show How Conservatives Reform Without Wrecking Britain's Conservatives in the nineteenth century showed that conserving an order can mean changing it first, a lesson Burke stated and Peel and Disraeli lived. The War of 1812 Gave America a Burned Capital and a Second Independence A young republic fought the world's greatest navy over impressment and trade, lost its capital to fire, and came out of the war more united and more respected. Burke Versus Paine, the Argument That Defined Left and Right for Good The 1790-1791 clash between Burke's Reflections and Paine's Rights of Man set the terms of the left-right divide. Here they are side by side. The 1689 English Bill of Rights and the arms clause Americans refused to copy England's 1689 arms clause protected Protestants, by rank, as Parliament allowed. The Americans wrote something broader, and the difference is the point. Most of Europe Does Not Grant Citizenship by Birth Alone. Here Is the Map Unconditional birthright citizenship is the norm in the Americas and rare among developed democracies, and the American question turns on one amendment. How Japan, Denmark, Switzerland and Mexico Guard Their Own Borders Four democracies control who enters and who becomes a citizen, often more strictly than America. A comparison table and what we could borrow.