The viability of a two-state solution depends entirely on the nature of the new Palestinian government. A state cannot achieve stability if it is run by a terrorist organization like Hamas. The international community's push for statehood is meaningless without addressing the internal governance that perpetuates violence.
To predict a leader's actions, disregard their words and even individual actions. Instead, focus on their consistent, long-term pattern of behavior. For Putin, the pattern is using negotiations as a stalling tactic to advance a fixed agenda, making him an unreliable partner for peace deals based on stated intentions.
Society functions like a business with a CEO and an operator. It requires an evolutionary balance between compassion (the left's tendency) and personal responsibility (the right's tendency). One without the other becomes pathological, leading to either freeloading or a lack of cohesion. This tension is necessary for a healthy system.
The phenomenon of pregnant women taking Tylenol to spite Trump illustrates how intense dislike for a political figure can lead to irrational, self-harming actions. This highlights the danger of being trapped by emotions and the importance of cultivating a healthy skepticism of one's own reactive impulses.
When police remove a Jewish man from a pro-Palestinian march for his own safety, they are misplacing the responsibility for potential violence. This logic is akin to victim-blaming. The duty of law enforcement in a free society is to protect individuals from attack, not to remove them because their presence might agitate a violent mob.
While both the Biden administration's pressure on YouTube and Trump's threats against ABC are anti-free speech, the former is more insidious. Surreptitious, behind-the-scenes censorship is harder to identify and fight publicly, making it a greater threat to open discourse than loud, transparent attacks that can be openly condemned.
The ultimate test of free speech is allowing potentially harmful ideas to circulate. While this may lead to negative consequences, it is preferable to the alternative. The 20th century saw 200 million people killed by their own governments, demonstrating that the tyranny required to enforce narrative control is a far greater danger.
While a unipolar world led by one's own country is advantageous, a multipolar world with competing powers like the U.S. and China creates a dynamic tension. This competition may force more compromised global decisions, potentially leading to a more balanced, albeit more tense, international system than one dominated by a single unchallenged power.