(1/15) The progressive party’s Iowa caucuses were a hilarious parody of progressive governance -- ambitious, complex, subtle and a carnival of unintended consequences. (2/15) The party that promises to fine-tune everything, from the production of wealth to the allocation of health care produced a fittingly absurd climax to what surely was Iowa’s final strut as a national distraction.

(1/13) The masked men who recently tossed firebombs at Jimmy Lai’s home targeted one of this city’s foremost democracy advocates. Lai, a 71-year-old media billionaire, calls this summer’s ongoing protest “a martyrdom movement” and “a last-straw movement.” (2/13) It has an intensity and dynamic that bewilders the protesters’ opponents in Beijing and in Hong Kong’s Beijing-obedient city administration.

(1/17) Regimes, however intellectually disreputable, rarely are unable to attract intellectuals eager to rationalize the regimes’ behavior. America’s current administration has “national conservatives.” (2/17) They advocate unprecedented expansion of government to purge America of excessive respect for market forces and to affirm robust confidence in government as a social engineer allocating wealth and opportunity.

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(1/12) Oberlin College has an admirable liberal past and a contemptible progressive present that will devalue its degrees far into the future. It has, however, long since become a byword for academic self-caricature... (2/12) where students protest, among many microaggressions, the food service's insensitive cultural appropriation of banh mi sandwiches, sushi and General Tso's chicken.