Nationalism has a justifiably bad reputation, given its responsibility for many or most of the horrors of the last two centuries. Is there anything good about nationalism? According to Liah Greenfeld in Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity, the origins of … Continue reading
We who live in China and have engaged in the least with local intellectuals in the debate about democracy in China should all be familiar with the argument that freedom requires discipline and responsibility. How, they ask, can we give … Continue reading
Put a kid in a room with a tempting cookie, and nothing else but that cookie, and see if he chooses to eat that cookie immediately or wait ten minutes, so that he is rewarded with another cookie. If he … Continue reading
Julia Lovell’s The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams, and the Making of China is generally a successful, highly readable history, especially in how it seems to collect every humorous detail about the Chinese war effort (not humorous to all, of course) … Continue reading