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And so the Republican Party should get serious, as serious as the age, because that is what a grown-up, responsible party—a party that deserves to lead—would do. We are going to need the best.

Justice Louis D. Brandeis’s metaphor of the states as "laboratories" for policy experiments is perhaps the most familiar and clichéd image of federalism. Contrary to common belief, however, Brandeis’s famous dictum had almost nothing to do with federalism and everything to do with his commitment to scientific socialism. That substantive view proved even more influential, in political thought and constitutional jurisprudence, than the metaphor that flowed from it. To this day, it continues to inhibit a truly experimental, federalist politics.

When the people’s strength had been diluted sufficiently, the enemies descended upon the land and ravaged the countryside.

The feminists thought, wow, men dominate everything, so society is set up to favor men. It must be great to be a man. The mistake in that way of thinking is to look only at the top. If one were to look downward to the bottom of society instead, one finds mostly men there too.

It's easy to pin the blame on someone who makes it easy. But that doesn't make it right.

The principles, with their references to "privileged interests" and the protection of Russian citizens, would probably seem rather obvious to Russian leaders of the 19th Century. They would seem rather mild to Stalin and his successors, who saw the Soviet Union extending communism across the globe.

Two factors above all sealed Georgia's fate during the summer of 2008: Moscow felt it had one last chance to pre-empt Georgia's joining NATO, and the invasion had to be done before the situation in Iraq got any better and freed up U.S. forces to act elsewhere.

Mikhail Gorbachev eloquently makes the case for Russia's response.

The founding document of The Economist.