Benn Steil
@BennSteil
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Director of International Economics, CFR. Award-winning author, THE WORLD THAT WASN'T, THE MARSHALL PLAN, & THE BATTLE OF BRETTON WOODS. Views mine. RT≠♥, ♥≠♥.
New York City
Joined December 2012
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Pinned Tweet
What I predicted in
@ForeignAffairs
in March, and what Putin is saying now . . .
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Republicans won't talk about America's surging oil output because a Dem did it. And Dems won't talk about America's surging oil output because a Dem did it.
The most under-covered contributor to US economic resilience — because neither party has the political incentive to celebrate it, or even discuss it. 🇺🇸
#OOTT
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Massive marches against anti-Semitism in Washington and major cities in France. No violence. No vandalism. No hate. Just basic human decency and empathy.
Hundreds of thousands of people across France marched on Sunday against rising antisemitism.
Thank you to everyone who came out to show support and solidarity with the Jewish community at this difficult time.
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No bias in this headline, no sir. Just the news.
Breaking News: A judge limited Biden administration officials from contacting social media sites, a ruling that could curtail efforts to fight disinformation.
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The Fed discovers a new Taylor Rule.
Taylor Swift's "Eras" tour is boosting the U.S. economy.
One Federal Reserve office says the concerts are helping fuel the national tourism industry.
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Sometimes I get the feeling it's not really about the climate . . .
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Sounds like he wants a permanent ceasefire.
Hamas leader: “Not just in the West Bank or Gaza, but in every city worldwide, we're shaping the future—training suicide bombers to target Jews”
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“I’m addressing you, your honour, and the prosecution. Aren’t you afraid to witness what our country is turning into? Aren’t you afraid that not only you and your children but, God forbid, your grandchildren will have to live in this dystopia?”
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If you need "welfare officer" services to cope with viewpoints other than your own you shouldn't be in university.
The Oxford Union will provide emergency “welfare resources”, including "welfare officers" specially trained to offer counselling, to help students cope psychologically with a talk by gender critical Professor of Philosophy Kathleen Stock later this month.
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Noteworthy that there is no longer an insistence that it was "civilian" or meteorological.
The entry of the strayed balloon into US airspace was a purely unintended, unexpected and isolated incident. It tests, however, whether the US is sincere about stabilizing and improving its relations with China and whether it can properly manage a crisis.
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We are doomed.
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This is major - not just a non-endorsement from Pence, but a rejection of Trump's bona fides.
Nothing but credit to
@Mike_Pence
. This is the courage many lack. Mike earned his stripes on J6 & earned them again here. He knows the threat Trump poses & won’t support him in November.
Others should follow. This is a
#PrinciplesFirst
move. Let’s roll.
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Genius with 430,000 followers calls historic Tel Aviv a "Palestinian beach".
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In one sentence, Griffiths tells us all we need to know about why
@UNRWA
is infested with Hamas members, including some who planned and carried out the October 7 massacres.
UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths: “Hamas is not a terrorist group. For us, of course, as you know, it’s a political movement.”
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Let's see if we can fix this for Mohamad, yes? Here we go . . .
"Billions of people around the globe are about to celebrate the birthday of a Jewish man, born in Bet Lehem, in the Judean hills, 2000+ years ago, but don't think Jews lived there before 1948."
Billions of people around the globe are about to celebrate the birthday of a Palestinian man, born in Bethlehem 2000+ years ago, but don't think Palestinians lived there before 1948.
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Hit a police officer on the head "to get his attention" and what do you expect will happen to you? It doesn't matter whether you're protesting against Israel, Hamas, or Chinese New Year.
Here’s that Professor of Economics who was arrested at Emory university and everyone seems to think is some poor victim of police repression. Caroline Fohlin ADMITS she hit a police officer on the head. Even professors are not allowed to assault cops. Yes, even professors.
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Twitter pro tip: If you wish to make a bold, unsubstantiated claim, just add the word "literally" to your tweet. The claim thereby becomes valid.
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Linda Sarsour warns that the "little people" who film those who rip down "their little posters" are "provocateurs" - provocateurs who are "on your college campus," "outside the supermarket"; they are "everywhere."
If someone talks like a Nazi, maybe it's not an accident.
Linda Sarsour: "There are provocateurs all across the city" waiting for you to rip down "their little posters ...They have their little people all around the city...They are everywhere. They are on your college campus, they are outside the supermarket..."
@lsarsour
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@sindap
I expect Switzerland to say that they are "coming together in a glorious celebration of alpine unity."
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"Every newspaper in America has a daily astrology column. How many have even a weekly science column?"
-Carl Sagan, 1987
The NYT used to have a Tuesday science supplement: "Science Times." It's gone. But they've boosted astrology content, along with content on race and gender.
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@nytimes
Why are you changing her words? She said "forcing a trans child to go through puberty . . . is tantamount to torture." Did you think that "denying care" sounded more reasonable as a euphemism for not chemically blocking puberty?
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There once was an editor fine
Who said that's enough, I resign
I'll get more acclaim
If I quit and defame
My colleagues who won't toe the line
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There are no doubt conservatives (and liberals) driven by prejudice. But this piece is deeply misleading in suggesting that people who oppose, say, biological males in women's sports, or gender surgery for minors without parental approval, are so driven.
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Three Ivy League presidents maintain repeatedly that "calling for the genocide of Jews" requires "context" to determine its acceptability.
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By this logic, of course, all of life is unfair, and anyone living by it is bound to be miserable and unable to cope.
A Princeton student argues that some courses are unfair because not everyone is equally prepared:
“In order to effectively address this disparity, Princeton needs to re-evaluate the difficulty of the STEM introductory courses and implement equity-oriented solutions that directly
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Joe Biden is making the most important vice-presidential choice since 1944. He can, and must, do better. He owes the country a new vice president.
My latest in
@Time
. . .
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"PLACE supports the . . . Specialized High School Admissions Test, or SHSAT, and expanding gifted and talented programs. The group generally opposes lottery-based admissions and paring back screened admissions to the city’s middle and high schools."
This is "far right."
The far right’s effort to take over schools is not limited to battlegrounds or red states - they just won 40% of the elected education roles in NYC.
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I would like to welcome the
@nytimes
back among the partisans of free, honest, and civilized public discourse.
“It has not gone unnoticed…that many of those who are now demanding the right to protest have previously sought to curtail the speech of those whom they declared hateful.”
Excellent editorial by the NYT:
“Establishing a culture of openness and free expression is crucial to the
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People rightly shake their heads in disgust and disbelief at Trump's comments - that the North could have "negotiated" away the conflict with the South over the abomination of slavery.
But too many of those same people believe the same thing with regard to Israel and Hamas.
Trump claims Civil War didn't have to happen: "You could've negotiated that ... this is something that could've been negotiated ... that was a tough one for our country ... if you negotiated it, you probably wouldn't even know who Abraham Lincoln was ... that would've been okay"
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Thank you, American taxpayer. Thank you, American consumer. Your suffering for one man's fantasies will never be forgotten.
President Trump in New Hampshire: "I took on communist China like no administration in history, bringing in hundreds of billions of dollars, pouring right into our treasury -- when no other president in all of these years had ever gotten ten cents."
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This is a strikingly clear, compelling, and important critique of the global trade and capital-flow regime.
My most recent essay on how the global trade regime undermines global growth and why rising protection is likely to be inevitable:
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@elianayjohnson
"Your Honor, I know the facts are the facts, and they are damning. No doubt. But consider who found them . . ."
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This is simply an extended non-sequitur, since tariffs have no systematic effect on trade deficits.
12/ The persistent and ballooning trade deficit is a stark, empirical refuation of the economic orthodoxy on trade. Hayek predicted the "self-regulating forces of the market" would keep exports and imports in balance.
@paulkrugman
called trade deficits "self-correcting." Nope.
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Future prospective employers will surely be impressed.
Yesterday at New York University, this student led a teach-in on how North Korea has never formally recognized Israel, has always been an ally of Palestinian "self determination and resistance", and "actively armed and trained" the Palestinian resistance" for decades.
"So while
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The U.S. won't tolerate China using its chips or refusing to use them.
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said the US “won’t tolerate” the recent decision by Chinese authorities to ban chips by Micron Technology in some critical sectors
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My latest in
@ForeignAffairs
reveals new details of Henry Wallace’s collusion with Stalin to undermine Truman during the 1948 presidential election campaign. The episode offers a red flag for the 2024 campaign.
A Genuine Case of Collusion
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I am proud to announce the launch of my new CFR Global Inflation Tracker.
The tracker uses interactive maps and charts to reveal patterns in prices - including inflation components, such as energy and services - across 200 countries, going back to 1990.
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Most riveting tweet video I've seen in years . . .
I just gained a lot more respect for France's President Macron.
This is the actual telephone call between Macron and Putin 4 days before the Invasion of Ukraine.
It's a very tense conversation and shows Putin's extreme delusions about what was happening in Ukraine.
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I no longer tweet. I Xcrete.
Now that “Twitter” will be known as “X”.
What should we call “Tweeting”?
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This abomination was justified by the patronizing claim that participation, which was voluntary, would subject minorities to "undue trauma or pain."
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Brilliant Paul Simon commentary on writing his masterpiece of a song for Art Garfunkel . . .
Happy b’day, “Bridge Over Troubled Water” — released today in 1970.
Paul Simon once explained how he wrote it specifically for Garfunkel — who wasn’t impressed.
“This is how partnerships break up.” 🙏🏼
(via
@BBCArchive
)
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A Generation Lab poll found that 67% of U.S. university students consider the Hamas attacks terrorism, while 12% consider them a justified act of resistance.
A Hebrew University poll found that 77% of Arab Israeli citizens opposed the Hamas attacks. A mere 5% supported them.
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Presidential historian Richard Norton Smith calls THE WORLD THAT WASN'T a "groundbreaking biography."
"Benn Steil comes closer than anyone before him to unraveling the enigma of this visionary hybrid of feeling and fact."
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@adam_tooze
You "regard the events of October 7 . . . as an occupied people exercising a right to resist"?
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"How this counterfactual history [of a pro-Soviet American foreign policy and consigning Europe to Communist control] came close to happening, and how it was prevented, is the subject of Benn Steil’s definitive account, 'The World That Wasn’t.'" . . .
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I don't understand. Where is the shouting? Where is the vandalism? Where is the hate?
Thousands gathered in Paris today to stand in solidarity with the Jewish community, in the wake of an alarming rise of antisemitism.
Thank you ❤️🇫🇷
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Thank goodness we still have leaders with the moral backbone to launch advisory boards.
Harvard President Claudine Gay launches antisemitism advisory board after students blamed Israel for Hamas attack
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"A few bad apples" - well, here's the orchard.
Beneath UNRWA’s Gaza Strip headquarters, the IDF has uncovered one of Hamas’s most significant and top secret assets: a subterranean data center used by the terror group for intelligence and communications.
The terror group built the server farm, complete with an electrical room
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500bp later, "Team Long Transitory for the win" . . .
😂😂😂
Still no recession, but core PCE down to 2.2% on a three-month basis. Team Long Transitory for the win.
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I wanted to give Musk the benefit of a doubt when he took over this platform. But he has proven himself morally unfit.
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NATO's Article 5 collective defense clause has been invoked once since its creation in 1949. That was by America's allies after it was attacked on September 11, 2001. Trump should be ashamed, but shame appears not to be in his repertoire.
Grotesque and idiotic and a gift to our enemies. Even if what he was saying was true, by “realist” rules it still hurts America to talk this way without getting anything for it. Not clever foreign policy, it’s abject ignorance masquerading as seriousness.
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How big a discount would you require to live in a condo named Trump?
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Jews will never be white enough for the far right or dark enough for the far left.
This is the single whitest political demonstration I've ever seen. Trump rallies have more melanin in the crowd.
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@crampell
Thanks to Senator Warren's stern words, Tom Brady's retirement, and 525bp of Fed tightening, inflation is way down.
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NYT staff, who demanded resignations when the paper published a Republican senator, are fine with it publishing a senior Hamas official.
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Really, TEDx? Really?
"Why is it that 5 000 units of our currency is worth one unit of your currency, where we are the ones with the actual gold reserves? It's quite evident, in fact, that the aid is not coming from the west to Africa, but from Africa to the western world."
Mallence Bart-Williams
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@jasonfurman
As opposed to the New Transitorians, led by Paul Krugman, who proclaim victory on the grounds that an immaculate disinflation took place against the background of impotent but somehow dangerous Fed rate hikes totaling 538 basis points.
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When you exclude major items that contribute to inflation, inflation is lower. Amazing.
An inflation update: in the past I've focused on a measure that excludes lagging shelter and used cars as well as food and energy. Just to note that it adds to the evidence that inflation has been largely defeated
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A moving, powerful statement from German Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck . .
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I used to think that Putin's invasion of Ukraine was a barbaric act of aggression, but I now understand that it was just as warranted as Hitler's invasion of Poland.
⚡️ Putin said the Poles forced Hitler to attack them in 1939.
Hitler just wanted to "realize his plans" and Poland was "uncooperative" and "forced" Hitler to attack and start World War II, Putin said.
So, 1939, late August.
Hitler: Poland, we want to annex you, agree!
Poland:
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FDR “put Wallace on the precipice of the presidency, for which Wallace was grotesquely unsuited. This story is told in Benn Steil’s new biography THE WORLD THAT WASN’T, which should be read 𝒓𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕 𝒏𝒐𝒘.”
- George Will
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This, too, will no doubt advance the cause of peace and understanding.
#BREAKING
Pro-palestine protesters DESTROY historic painting of Lord Balfour in Trinity College at the University of Cambridge, by spraying and then slashing it.
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How do Westerners call for a "permanent ceasefire" with Hamas when Hamas insists, and has always insisted, that its war to eliminate Israel is permanent?
It’s Western cowards posing as leaders & diplomats who keep talking about ceasefires & concessions to aggressors, Russia and Hamas, that the aggressors themselves reject completely. Stop trying to make dictators and terrorists happy. You can’t unless you’re dead. Defeat them.
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@crampell
You may also remember that progressives like Warren and AOC argued that behemoths such as Walmart were destroying jobs with everyday-low-prices, and then blamed them for creating greedflation.
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That this administration can't even contemplate a real trade deal with desperate Britain shows how deeply we have sunk into the protectionist muck.
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@jasonfurman
During the GFC, prominent progressive economists supported price-level targeting. Now they're silent. The difference with today was, of course, that inflation was low and falling.
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“A lesson of Steil’s timely, riveting biography [of Henry Wallace] is: Playing roulette with presidential successions is risky.”
- George Will
Roosevelt fixed his serious VP mistake. Will Biden?
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Remember when it was the right backing creationism, and all manner of anti-science? Well, here it is now, loud and clear, from the left. Creation myths will be taught in our schools as being equal in epistemological value to evidence of the Big Bang.
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Well, some of us thought we might be done, Others thought we really needed two more hikes. So we made this compromise. We would pause, but make scary hawk noises. It was awkward, sure, but, hey, what could we do?
- Powell on truth serum
via
@economics
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The Root of China’s Growing Youth Unemployment Crisis
My latest
@CFR_org
Geo-Graphics blog post with Elisabeth Harding . . .
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This is what the
@AP
is calling a "protest" over a flight from Tel Aviv.
This is the same
@ap
which says that Palestinians have been killed while Jews have only "died".
Mobs break into the Makhachkala airport, in Russia’s north Caucasus, looking to lynch Jews after rumors spread about the arrival of Jewish refugees from Israel.
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Why does the U.S. claim a perpetual right to appoint the World Bank president, but not the more important IMF head?
To cover up a spy scandal, of course:
The full story is told here:
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How to give an economist high blood pressure.
(For the umpteenth time, journalists, don't confuse a method of calculation with a causal relationship!)
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Hamas-murdered-your-parents,-threw-you-in-a-van,-and-dragged-you-into-a-tunnel-below-a-Gaza-hospital-to-protect-you-from-your-fellow-Jews stands out as perhaps the stupidest take on what has quickly become the earth's stupidest-ever media site.
Imagine being an Israeli who has been kept alive in Gaza by Hamas amidst the unprecedented bombing campaign of Gaza by your government.
While Gazans are being killed, city blocks flattened, bombs and missiles falling continuously; and you have now witnessed and experienced all
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"[A] groundbreaking biography. . . . Benn Steil comes closer than anyone before him to unraveling the enigma of this visionary hybrid of feeling and fact."
- Presidential historian Richard Norton Smith
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My debate with
@LHSummers
on seizing Russia's reserves is now up . . .
Listen to our podcast episode with
@LHSummers
and
@BennSteil
unpacking the debate question: Should Ukraine Get Russia’s Frozen Assets?
@FT
's
@gilliantett
guest moderates. Streaming on
@ApplePodcasts
.
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Ro Khanna is "tired of economists reciting data." He wants to do commonsense things to address the housing shortage, like "cap rents."
We've tried facts and logic, people. It's time for change. We need ignorance.
I’m tired of economists reciting data to shame people into celebrating the economy when the price of groceries, gas, utilities, and rent is high. We need to go after big corporations and utilities pricing people out of the American Dream.
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Every university president should listen carefully to, and reflect on, Fareed's incisive observations.
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@Ayaan
Interesting piece, but I'm not buying the logic. The Crusaders were Christian. Tolerance is not a classically Christian virtue. It is a Stoic (pagan) one. And Stoicism does not require faith or even a deity to be spiritually fulfilling. Become a Stoic.
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This story made my day . . .
"Teens come up with trigonometry proof for Pythagorean Theorem, a problem that stumped math world for centuries"
via
@60minutes
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The owner of "X" is one of its leading purveyors of disinformation.
Hey
@elonmusk
, first those are not "our" bases. We are hosted by allies who provide access. Also, the graphic you posted is nonsense. We don't have access in more that a few, none in many of the countries you show. Truth matters.
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Superb, and deeply depressing, thread about the ongoing real-life cost of Brexit.
You get a better appreciation of the benefits of trade from this thread than from dozens of economics papers. (This thread has also been seen by more people than those dozens of economics papers.)
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Have read it three times this year alone. Perhaps the greatest, most profound novel in the English language.
Thank you so much
@AmericanGwyn
for recommending this novel. Unbelievably poignant and relatable.
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All you have to do is listen to her nervous "uhs" to know that she knows she is massacring logic.
Intellectual insanity
Judith Butler: "Hamas and Hezbollah are social movements that are progressive and are part of the Global Left"
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As home sales fall to their lowest rate in 13 years, the U.S. is facing a significant and worsening housing shortage.
Read my latest
@CFR_org
Geo-Graphics blog post with Elisabeth Harding:
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