Homesick Politics

But I am not a nostalgic type.

No surprise, then, that they are nostalgic for the past, including Stalin.

These two versions of the Chavez years are both distorted to a certain degree by nostalgia.

At that point, we'll start romanticizing the future again, instead of the nasty, brutish past.

Still, the illusion was nice while it lasted, and Obamamania may contain an element of nostalgia, as well as hope.

Yet there is an undeniable whiff of nostalgia in the current rapprochement between two powers that are both conscious of their relative decline in the world.

The current trend toward rose colored retrospection is a case in point. Faced with political, economic, geostrategic, and social uncertainty, policymakers have increasingly succumbed to the allure of nostalgia, promising a return to what they portray as the familiar and complete rules and practices of the past.

But this slogan is from the 1920 s and seems like a nostalgic reminder of past turmoil that one prefers to see on the stage.

What is the link between nostalgia for a simplified and less risky banking sector and the wish to reintroduce a currency system that also seems a relic of the past?

So no one in Europe needs to fear that the Czech Republic has some nostalgic or idiosyncratic agenda that it wants to impose on the Union.

Diaspora cultures thrive on nostalgic dreams of return.

This politics of nostalgia is troubling, not only because France and Europe confront severe economic challenges, but also because France and other democracies are confronted with real challenges to their legitimacy.

There is still a certain degree of nostalgia on the far right for Fanco s dictatorship.

But Volcker has also been a prominent critic of the dangers of currency volatility. What is the link between nostalgia for a simplified and less risky banking sector and the wish to reintroduce a currency system that also seems a relic of the past?

This absence of animating purpose, of faith in the future, has made us hungry for our past.

Last week, a grainy video from 2005 made headlines, shaking up viewers around the globe.

I know that we have come a long way, and I do not want to go back. But was it really inevitable that so much solidarity had to escape our Solidarity?

The Edo nostalgia in Japan and the Norway model s appeal in the UK are not rational choices.

Homage to Catalonia is George Orwell's personal account of his experiences and observations in the Spanish Civil War.

This yearning for providential men or women in our global age results from at least three factors.

Last week, Kyrgyzstani bloggers were worried about the threat of Islamisation in their country.

Various conspiracy theories have circulated about Obama's Shia background in the past.

Historians have the luxury of debating whether terrorism may have been justified in certain situations in the past.

This is inevitable, because that rupture is being fueled by the simple acknowledgement that responsible governments must place national interests ahead of nostalgia, grandstanding rhetoric, and strident ideology.

Instead, they have been engaged for weeks in an unseemly brawl about the past.

He is nostalgic for the 1960's and the Gaullist ideology that shaped both France and himself.

But Soviet nostalgia has far more to do with Russia s traditional Great Power ambitions than with communism.

Late last year, the Department of Peacekeeping Operations issued a policy on human trafficking.

With Putin s current clampdown on civil society, re nationalization of key segments of the economy, failure to develop any political approach to resolving the conflict in Chechnya, and cultivation of imperial nostalgia, Russia is killing its only chance to matter in the future.

But past mistakes have also taught Egyptians important lessons about what a successful transition demands.

Fighting around the city on April 30 killed 12 militants, a soldier and a tribal militia member.

Out of nostalgia, perhaps? A full page ad for Patek Philippe has Thierry Stern, the president of the company, saying that he listens to the chime of every watch with a minute repeater that his company makes, as his father and grandfather did before him.

Since Putin s return to the presidency last year, the relationship has deteriorated further, owing to disagreements over arms control, missile defense, and human rights.

In Japan, the isolationist temptation is expressed in the current nostalgia for the Edo period, from 1600 to 1868, before Emperor Meiji opened Japan to the world.

During the past quarter century, but especially over the five years leading up to 2008, the world seemed to revolve around the American consumer.

So, for the foreseeable future, the West will have to deal with a Russia that yearns for its lost imperial power and shapes its foreign policy to this end.

This bizarre brew appears to have been concocted in an effort to reconcile the irreconcilable the current yearning for democracy with Russia s despotic past.

The debate about room for fiscal maneuver in practice soon becomes a debate about whether countries that have easily financed debt in the past can automatically continue to do so.

Some of Russian President Vladimir Putin s statements seem to recall the Soviet era with nostalgia.

Indeed, much has been written recently about the ascent of the left in Latin America over the past decade.

So when I edited a story about a video of a mother hitting her own child that went viral last week, I was sad.

It is an optimistic essay regarding the future of Europe, discussing how Europe has become a society torn between the values of the past and the uncertainties of the future.

Anne Marie Slaughter, who wrote a much read article about the glass ceiling last year, has sought an open debate about where the problems lie.

The operation of European institutions the European Central Bank, the European Commission, and the Stability Pact is facing severe criticism, but not in the name of a nostalgia for national sovereignty.