Niall Ferguson on Trump’s National Security Strategy. The EU’s New Censorship. Plus. . . In defense of blowing stuff up. Jed Rubenfeld on the gerrymander wars. Our next event. And more.
When Trump published his NSS in the early hours of Friday morning last week, it prompted an almighty brouhaha. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)
It’s Monday, December 8. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: In defense of blowing stuff up. The EU opens a new front in its war on speech. D.C.’s contempt for the National Guard. Coleman Hughes talks to Reid Hoffman, the tech founder who didn’t make peace with Trump. And much more. But first: Niall Ferguson on the outrage over Trump’s foreign policy priorities. Upon entering office, every U.S. president issues a document called the National Security Strategy. The big-picture memo rarely generates much fuss outside the foreign policy blob. But when Trump published his NSS late Thursday night last week, it prompted an almighty brouhaha—or stramash, “a good Old Scots word” used by Free Press columnist and our favorite Glaswegian Niall Ferguson to describe the reaction in his latest essay. “Hostility [to Europe] is official White House policy,” declared The New York Times. Europe is “seen by the administration as being on the colonial menu,” declared one think tanker in The Wall Street Journal. The Yale historian Timothy D. Snyder said the document read like a Russian national security document. The Economist said the 33-page report should cause America’s allies to “panic.” In The Free Press today, Niall asks: What’s all the fuss about? To find out, click the link below. —Oliver Wiseman Live in New York: A Pub Conversation with Cardinal DolanJoin us in NYC on December 17 at 7 p.m. for an exciting pub conversation between The Free Press’s Will Rahn and Archbishop of New York Timothy Cardinal Dolan on what religion meant to the Founders 250 years ago, the state of religious freedom in 2025, and whether America is on the verge of a great religious revival. There are only a few tickets remaining. Get them while you still can. |