Be Like Reagan, says Kaplan. More specifically:

Iran is the new Eastern Europe during the last phase of the Cold War. Like Poland during the heady days of Solidarity in the early 1980s, the protestors in the streets of Iranian cities are not crazed ethnics demonstrating on behalf of some illiberal blood-and-soil nationalism, but enlightened, technologically savvy multitudes crying out for universal values of democracy and human rights. As such, they have captured the imagination of liberal intellectuals in the West. Even as the United States is tied down with 200,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran promises to be the signal issue of our time.

Rare for Kaplan, he lays out a policy prescription for the US President—well, be like Reagan, but more specifically:

Given that the regime could last another month or another decade, what is President Barack Obama to do? Throughout his first year in office, he’s attempted the Nixonian détente approach: talk, work back channels, get the two governments to negotiate on the basis of naked national interests. That approach seems to have failed—less because it doesn’t make sense than because the Iranian regime is so internally divided that it can’t adequately respond. That leaves us with the Reaganite approach: be open to far-reaching talks, as President Ronald Reagan was with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, but do nothing to legitimize the Iranian system. And, throughout any discussions, adopt the rhetoric of democracy. Make it clear that Washington is on the same side of history as the demonstrators, but also make it clear that the door is open to negotiations with those in power. And to avoid the risk of undermining the demonstrators by overt American support of them (thus catering to regime’s basest conspiracy theories), Obama should talk about democracy only in general, albeit pointed, terms, without directly referring to Iran. That is, he should get the language of universal values out over Iranian air waves as much as possible: encouraging the demonstrators without specifically backing them.

We are not in control. But something wonderful has begun: nothing less than the most positive development in the Middle East since President Anwar Sadat went to Jerusalem. And while that daring gesture led only to a cold bilateral peace between Egypt and Israel, the Green Revolution in Iran carries the potential to unleash a true Islamic Reformation.

Yet another guest post on history and theology by occasional guest contributor Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace.

The story of Sir Isaac Newton stumbling upon the nature of gravity after seeing an apple fall to earth is one of the most enduring, and endearing, anecdotes of modern physics. Newton (1642-1727) was a genius with many skills. He laid the groundwork for classical mechanics, which usefully describes all macroscopic phenomena affecting our daily lives, built the first reflecting telescope, showed that white light was a mixture of colors, and invented calculus. His famous Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Principia) was to physics what Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species was for biology.

Less well known is that Newton was a deeply religious Christian who wrote more on Biblical interpretation than he did on science. In particular he was very uneasy about the doctrine of the Trinity, and wrote a weighty tome entitled An Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture. Most of his ire was aimed at the first letter of John (1 John 5:7), which in the King James’ Bible reads “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.” By comparing early manuscripts in many languages, he came to the conclusion that the final phrase was a late addition. His writings were so controversial that he dared not publish them during his lifetime, yet modern scholars concur, and the Revised New Standard Version has been revised to end with, “these three agree.”

Newton also had a bone to pick with the doctrine esposed by Bishop Athenasius (293-373) of Alexandria (Egypt) over the question of whether Christ was a different ‘substance’ from the Father. Athenasius proposed a robust Triniarian creed, as opposed to the doctrine that there was a time when only God the Father existed, and that Christ was in some small way subservient to him. Here again, Newton wrote a spirited critique—Paradoxical Questions Concerning the Morals and Actions of Athanasius and his Followers in the 1690s—and once again, history has him on the winning side. Athenasius’ creed is consigned to the archives of historical documents.

Today these issues of Christian theology seem arcane and tedious, but don’t think for a moment that Newton’s hesitation to publish during his lifetime was whimsical. His views in the 17th century were subject to prosecution, as it was an offense to deny any of the persons of the Trinity to be God, punishable with loss of office. Newton’s caution was clearly warranted, as a friend lost his professorship at Cambridge for this very reason in 1711. By comparison, he got off lucky—an eighteen-year-old student, Thomas Aikenhead, was hanged at Edinburgh, Scotland in 1697 for denying the Trinity.

Newton’s biography leaves two lessons to today’s students of history.

First, the fathers of the natural science—Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton, and :ahem: Alfred Russel Wallace—did not find natural science to be incompatible with their Christian faith. If they merely attended church and nodded agreement at religious thought of the time, it might be easy to dismiss them as charletans who stuck to the thought of the time to protect themselves. Yet this was far from the case—all three wrote careful engagements of religion at the time, and all had unique takes on theology. This seems hard to consider when we see the vocal vitriol of those such as geneticist Richard Dawkins, who claims title to Darwin’s legacy of evolution.

Second, when we recoil at today’s Islamic religious zealots, such as the Ayatollah of Iran ordering the assassination of Salman Rushdie for blasphemy, public commenters think this is evidence of the intollerance of Islam. Yet we might stop and ponder what future generations will think of some of our attempts in the past of enforcing orthodoxy and the results it caused in spreading fear and stifiling free expression. How will history view us both centuries from now? After all, Rushdie survives to this day and has claimed celebrity status overseas. Thomas Aikenhead was not nearly so lucky.

If you can get past the initial vulgarity, this jolly little skit is most amusing.

I believe the Prime Minister is Robert Cecil, an (in)famous traditional, aristocratic conservative.

I tweeted this but it is too awesome not to share here: The world’s first Swiss Army knife has been revealed – made 1,800 years before its modern counterpart.

Makes you wonder if there was ever a Primus MacGyverus…

Via William Gibson, aka @GreatDismal.

Or so says Christopher Hitchens in a compelling piece in Slate on North Korea. Part reminiscence, part reconsidertion, and part book review, Hitchens praises the book The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters, recently written by B.R. Myers, in which Hitchens repeats Myer’s theory that communism in North Korea is dead—its most recent constitution drops all mention of the word and there is no dictatorship of the proletariat. Instead, Pyongyang operates like a textbook fascist totalitarian government, maintained by slave labor, and based on racism and xenophobia. (Ironically, many of the principles may be carried over from Japanese imperialism.)

I think the population’s ignorance about their state of affairs is overblown, and I don’t think that Hitchens’ one racist, xenophobic tour guide is quite as representative of the population as he claims to think, and I think that in the past few years the people of the DPRK have learned that their government is dirt poor compared to their southern neighbor. (The country recently backtracked on its currency devaluation after it unleashed public outrage, a mighty rare occurrance.) But that’s about the only point of optimism in the Korea.

Hitchens’ article is titled A Nation of Racist Dwarfs, and the reason is clear only at the end of the article:

Here are the two most shattering facts about North Korea. First, when viewed by satellite photography at night, it is an area of unrelieved darkness. Barely a scintilla of light is visible even in the capital city. Second, a North Korean is on average six inches shorter than a South Korean. You may care to imagine how much surplus value has been wrung out of such a slave, and for how long, in order to feed and sustain the militarized crime family that completely owns both the country and its people.

But this is what proves Myers right. Unlike previous racist dictatorships, the North Korean one has actually succeeded in producing a sort of new species. Starving and stunted dwarves, living in the dark, kept in perpetual ignorance and fear, brainwashed into the hatred of others, regimented and coerced and inculcated with a death cult: This horror show is in our future, and is so ghastly that our own darling leaders dare not face it and can only peep through their fingers at what is coming.

I think the last line is interesting coming from Hitchens, a left-wing radical who supported advocated invading Iraq on the grounds that the civilized nations of the world will inevitably have to face off against such a tyrant, and that it was better to do so on our terms. He stops short of advocating a strike on North Korea, but the dreaded implication is that we are going to have to deal with the fallout from North Korea’s tragic situation at some point, and the legacy will likely be with us for a century or more.

From Fastcompany.com comes this introduction to the zoomable paper map. Each quarter of the map can be unfolded, revealing zoomed-in detail.

In Christopher Hitchens’s interview with EconTalk about his book Why Orwell Matters, Hitchens praises George Orwell on his “plain honest speech, transparent political positions, detestation for euphemism and falsification” and argues (1:00:54~):

The job of the intellectual, the so-called public intellectuals as we are now for some reason doomed to call it, is or ought to be to say something along the following lines: “It’s more complicated than that… You mustn’t simplify this… There’s more complexity to the subject.” That’s what an intellectual should be doing to public discourse, one thinks. But then there are occasions when it seems to me that the reverse is the case. That actually what the really thoughtful person should be saying is actually: “It’s simple! Do not make complexity here, where none is required.”

You can listen to the above quote (and a bit extra) straight from Hitchens below:

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What an excellent point. Often I find myself exasperated with commentary on the internet which frequently represents the extreme and the childish, with no indication of understanding or nuance. The short-form of the blog only exacerbates the problem. It is almost enough to abandon the enterprise altogether. But all hope for public discourse on the internet is not lost! The point made by Hitchens, that sometimes things are just that simple tempers my irritation. It is a useful aphorism to keep bias in check.

Of course, the problem remains of proper application. The non-complexity argument cannot be used for every issue, and one must recognize its misuse and call it out. Truly complex issues should be handled in other forae, such as academic journals or conferences. But there are issues that can be broached in shorter formats. For example issues of morality or principle. Abandoning relativism, properly defining terms and being transparent in speech (as Orwell advises in his classic essay Politics of the English Language) should lead to clearer understanding in general. Casting off complexity is not drawing an arbitrary line in the proverbial sand (eg. moralizing), but stripping away the unwarranted and getting at the core of an argument. Often simple is not easy, and complexity is used to obfuscate. Nobody ever said being a public intellectual would be easy.

Listen to the entire Christopher Hitchens interview with EconTalk.

Pop quiz for readers—who is the oldest monarch in the world? You might think that the answer is Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, or Emperor Akihito of Japan, or King Rama IX of Thailand, or perhaps someone else.

Give us your answer in the comments, but naturally, no googling or any other form of unfair play, please! I’ll be back with the answer in about 24 hours.

(See past pop quizes here, here and here.)

France, unlike other European countries, seems to be willing to draw clear lines regarding what citizenship and French values mean, and to deny it without concern over leftist or politically correct criticism. A recent case:

The French government has refused to grant citizenship to a foreign national on the grounds that he forced his wife to wear the full Islamic veil. The man, whose current nationality was not given, needed citizenship to settle in the country with his French wife.

But Immigration Minister Eric Besson said this was being refused because he was depriving his wife of the liberty to come and go with her face uncovered. Last week, a parliamentary committee proposed a partial ban on full veils. It also recommended that anyone showing visible signs of “radical religious practice” be refused residence permits and citizenship.

I salute France in standing up for its values. No foreigner has a right to citizenship or even residence and twisted ideas of about fairness, political correctness and tolerance have led countries to act against their own interest by allowing in those who do not share even the most fundamental values of the land. For particularly sick examples see the Netherlands and Great Britain.

As immigration from the developing countries to industrialized countries continues to grow, and communication and transportation technology increases the movement of people across national borders, the question of the value and meaning of citizenship is something that must be raised again. If citizenship boils down to birth location or having the correct paperwork, then it is meaningless. Readers, what does citizenship mean today, particularly in a time of multiple loyalties?

Last year I posted this fantastical map of WWI Europe from Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld. This week I read the book, which I found to be an excellent escape. It was supposed to be nightstand reading, but I couldn’t put it down.

Rather than a graphic novel in the Dark Knight and Watchmen style, this is an illustrated novel. The hardcover is thick, but is a quick read with black and white illustrations every 5 or 10 pages. I think the audiobook would be really entertaining, but the illustrations make the printed version worthwhile. If you have an imaginative 15 year old in the house, this book is highly recommended. I am sure many in the CA community — steeped in history, science and technology — would also get a kick out of this book.

The only criticisms I have — aside from the negative characterisation of Churchill — are technical: character development is rather unsubtle, and mixed metaphors run rampant as a school of fish. That said, this book is not supposed to be Chaucer. It is meant for young readers and is thus fast-paced with lots of action. It is a fantastical adventure that is also character building. Westerfeld’s strength is in descriptive detail. He has filled his alternate reality with historical hooks and clever technological innovations. As stated in the Epilogue: “That’s the nature of steampunk, blending future and past.”

The world of Leviathan is highly imaginative and engaging. I can’t wait for the second installment.

Below is a trailer featuring many of the illustrations in the book. See more at Scott Westerfeld’s blog.