Welcome to my website!  Obviously, a major reason for my launching this site is to make people aware of my forthcoming book, Chomsky’s Challenge.  Another reason is to give me an outlet for doing one of the things I like to do best–talk about politics.  Hopefully, you’ll find at least some of what I have to say interesting and even worth discussing.  I’m looking forward to some interesting conversations.

This will be a somewhat irregular blog both in frequency and in form.  I may sometimes post as frequently as a few times a week, but other times much less often.  Some of my postings will be brief comments on current news items and commentaries; others will be longer, more or less mini-essays–usually related to ongoing political issues, but not necessarily to today’s news.

I will make it plain from the beginning that I am a person of the left.  I believe that our hugely productive capitalist economy, if left to its own devices, is inequitable, cruel, destructive and unstable. The only available remedy for those ills is an active state–what its American detractors call “big government.”  On the other hand, in foreign policy I believe the American state in many ways has been too  active.  Much of what is commonly billed as “national defense” or “national security” policy isn’t really about protecting Americans’ security; it’s about maintaining the US position as the world’s unique, unchallengeable superpower.  I don’t believe our security requires the projection of American power into every corner of the planet.  The effort to do so is expensive, gets us into wars and reduces our ability to build a more decent society at home.

I didn’t plan it that way, but I can’t help but note that this website starts out on a somber date in US history. My office was on the 88th floor of 1 World Trade Center; I had colleagues who didn’t make it out that day 12 years ago. It’s a date that has a special poignancy for me.

So much by way of introduction. My first “real” posting will be out tomorrow. Unavoidably, it will be about Syria.