In this sense, China s effort to deliberately create, through government fiat, global financial centers is both exacting and dogmatic.

This program, like so many educational or cultural Israeli Palestinian partnerships, began in starry eyed idealism.

While the war in Iraq has been based on wishful thinking, the war in Afghanistan was necessary and unavoidable because it was there that the terrorist threat of September 11, 2001, originated.

Maybe Romney really is feeling sentimental about the Anglo Saxon heritage, even as Asian power grows. If so, nostalgia for Churchill is hardly a sign of American vitality, but more like a romantic rearguard battle, typical of a country in decline.

Well, amazingly, for once, our world leaders actually lived up to that millennium moment and back in 2000 agreed to some pretty extraordinary stuff visionary, measurable, long term targets called the Millennium Development Goals.