Breaking news: Goldman Sachs is no longer a charity
Last week the New York Times published an op-ed piece by Greg Smith, a 33-year-old midlevel banker with Goldman Sachs in London, in which he explains why he is resigning from the Wall Street firm. In his view, the culture in Goldman Sachs is “toxic and destructive”, and the ...
This week’s articles of note
“The lost party,” New York Magazine, by John Heilemann [on the Republican primary contest]
“The emperor of vanished kingdoms,” Wall Street Journal, by Raymond Zhang [Interview with Norman Davies, historian of Europe]
“Party crasher: Ron Paul’s unique brand of libertarianism,” The New Yorker, by Kelefa Sanneh
“True innovation,” The ...
Greece: no rescue
The eurozone finance ministers’ €130 billion bailout package for Greece announced on Tuesday, the second in two years, will not “rescue” Greece. It makes the economic situation worse, and represents a further tightening of the European Union’s stranglehold on national sovereignty and democracy in Greece.
Euro bureaucrats claimed the deal was ...
Food prigs and “happy” pigs
Mark Bittman is a food journalist and the author of the recently-published book Food Matters, which he describes as ” a look at the links among eating too much meat, obesity, global warming, and other nasty features of modern life”.
Naturally, Bittman is a critic of ...
Republicans taking the bait on the contraception issue?
In the cover story for Newsweek, Andrew Sullivan argues Obama’s compromise offer on the birth control and religious freedom controversy has “set a trap for the right”:
The more Machiavellian observer might even suspect this is actually an improved bait and switch by Obama to more firmly identify the religious right with opposition ...
What happened to illegitimacy? Births outside marriage now the norm
Yesterday’s New York Times led with a remarkable statistic: for the first time, a majority of women under 30 who give birth are unmarried.
As the Times reports:
Once largely limited to poor women and minorities, motherhood without marriage has settled ...
With focus on lame Republicans, Obama’s prospects have improved
The latest New York Times/CBS News pollconfirms a recent trend since the end of last year: President Obama’s political standing is improving.
Obama’s job approval rating is now 50 percent, ...
This week’s articles of note
“The future of history: can liberal democracy survive the decline of the middle class?” Foreign Affairs, by Francis Fukuyama
“Billionaire Peter Thiel is worried about America’s future,” Newsweek, by Niall Ferguson
“California’s demographic revolution,” City Journal, by Heather MacDonald
“The factory jobs aren’t coming back,” Salon, by Robert Reich
Why the contraception controversy matters
American liberals are wrong: Obama’s contraception rule is a violation of important religious liberties.
Read my spiked article in full here.
Contraception and religious liberty: a debate liberals don’t want to have
Liberals who support the Obama administration’s rule that requires insurance plans operated by Catholic-affiliated institutions, such as universities and hospitals, to offer contraception generally think that the criticisms raised by Catholic bishops, Republican politicians and other are driven by narrow political concerns, rather than the principle of religious freedom. They ...
ABOUT SEAN COLLINS
I write about American current affairs for Spiked, the online magazine. I am a native New Yorker, and I divide my time between New York City and upstate New York.
In addition to articles for Spiked, The Australian and other publications, I contributed an essay, "BDS: Demonizing Israel, Destroying Free Speech," for the book Unsafe Space: The Crisis of Free Speech on Campus (2016). I also wrote a chapter on New York City's economy for the book London After Recession: A Fictitious Capital? (2012).
My writings have been cited in American Conservative, Arts & Letters Daily, the Financial Times, Fox News, the Huffington Post, the New York Daily News, the New York Post, the New York Times, Real Clear Politics, and the Times of London, among other media.
For more about The American Situation site, go here.
