Michael Moran: The Reckoning: Debt, Democracy, and the Future of American Power, Authors at Google
The age of American global dominance is ending. In recent years, risky economic and foreign policies have steadily eroded the power structure in place since the Cold War. And now, staggering under a huge burden of debt, the country must make some tough choices--or watch its creditors walk away. In The Reckoning, Michael Moran, a geostrategy analyst at Roubini Global Economics, the Council on Foreign Relations, and other leading institutions, explores how a variety of forces are converging to challenge US leadership--including unprecedented information technologies, the growing prosperity of countries like China, India, Brazil, and Turkey, and the diminished importance of Wall Street in the face of global markets.
. This shift will have serious consequences for the wider world as well. Countries that have traditionally depended on the United States for protection will have to adjust their policies to reality. Each nation will be responsible for its own human rights record, energy production, and environmental policy, and revolutions will succeed or fail unaided. Moran describes how, with a bit of political leadership, America can transition to this new world order gracefully--by managing entitlements, reigniting sustainable growth, reforming immigration policy, and breaking the poisonous deadlock in Washington. If not, he warns, the new era will arrive on its own terms and provide a nasty shock to those clinging to the 20th century. You can find more information about ... |
The History of Slavery In America (part 1 of 3)
Slavery in the United States began soon after English colonists first settled Virginia in 1607 and lasted as a legal institution until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865. It continues illegally to this day. Before the widespread establishment of chattel slavery, much labor was organized under a system of bonded labor known as indentured servitude. This typically lasted for several years for white and black alike, and it was a means of using labor to pay the costs of transporting people to the colonies.
. By the 18th century, court rulings established the racial basis of the American incarnation of slavery to apply chiefly to Black Africans and people of African descent, and occasionally to Native Americans. A 1705 Virginia law stated slavery would apply to those peoples from nations that were not Christian. In part because of the success of tobacco as a cash crop in the Southern colonies, its labor-intensive character caused planters to import more slaves for labor by the end of the 17th century than did the northern colonies. The South had a significantly higher number and proportion of slaves in the population. Religious differences contributed to this geographic disparity as well. From 1654 until 1865, slavery for life was legal within the boundaries of much of the present United States. Most slaves were black and were held by whites, although some Native Americans and free blacks also held slaves; there were a small number ... |