I’m glad some U.S. orchestras cut Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture from their July 4 concerts. Let’s just drop it once and for all. Do we really need to celebrate our independence • Read More »
Ottawa Residents Have More Political Rights than Washingtonians
May 24, 2021 | By eric.terzuolo | No Comments | Filed in: Canada, DC Statehood.Ottawa residents have more political rights than Washingtonians. The Canadian capital has no special place within the federal structure. It’s not a federal capital territory. The situation is much like • Read More »
Tags: Canadian House of Commons, Canadian Senate, DCStatehood, DCStatehoodNow, Ottawa
Berliners Have More Political Rights than Washingtonians
May 5, 2021 | By eric.terzuolo | No Comments | Filed in: DC Statehood, Germany.Berliners have more political rights than Washingtonians. Like Bavaria or Hesse (where Frankfurt is located), Germany’s capital is a full-fledged unit of the German federation. A Land in German parlance, • Read More »
Tags: Berlin, Bremen, Bundesrat, Bundestag, DCStatehood, Germany
Taxation Without Representation? Not in Canberra
April 29, 2021 | By eric.terzuolo | No Comments | Filed in: Australia, DC Statehood.“Taxation Without Representation” is on my DC license plates. Of course I feel I deserve voting representation in the House and Senate. But deserving and having are different things, and • Read More »
Tags: Australian Capital Territory, Canberra, District of Columbia, Federal capitals, political representation
Fear and Voluntary Servitude Shape Politics
February 24, 2021 | By eric.terzuolo | No Comments | Filed in: Miscellaneous.Fear and voluntary servitude are powerful political motivators. “When you strike at a king, you must kill him.” This was Ralph Waldo Emerson’s advice to Oliver Wendell Holmes who, as • Read More »
Tags: Emerson, Estienne de la Boétie, fear, monarchy, Peter Baker, reprisal, trump, voluntary servitude
A Really Close Call
December 7, 2020 | By eric.terzuolo | No Comments | Filed in: Miscellaneous.We’ve had a really close call. I’m glad I put blogging and much else aside for a while, when I became deeply immersed in the Biden/Harris get out the vote • Read More »
Tags: coup, Fascist, hitler, inept authoritatianism, mussolini, Napoleon, Nazi, nearest run thing, Trump Administration, Waterloo, Wellington
Trump’s Italian Doppelgänger
October 3, 2020 | By eric.terzuolo | No Comments | Filed in: Italy, US Government Operations. 
Trump’s Italian Doppelgänger survived COVID-19. An encouraging example for the President, perhaps. Though more visibly fit, recidivist former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi is actually ten years older than Trump. Still, he • Read More »
Tags: Berlusconi, COVID-19, populism, trump
Pullout from NATO: Could It Be Stopped?
September 7, 2020 | By eric.terzuolo | No Comments | Filed in: Miscellaneous.Pullout from NATO in a second Trump term? The September 3 New York Times piece by @michaelcrowley was enough to trigger palpitations in any old security policy wonk. No big surprise, in truth. The President • Read More »
Tags: 2020 election, NATO, North Atlantic Treaty, presidential power, Senate, treaty withdrawal
First Do No Harm. And the Democratic Platform Doesn’t
August 22, 2020 | By eric.terzuolo | No Comments | Filed in: Democratic Party, Diplomacy. 
“First do no harm.” Not an actual quotation from the Hippocratic Oath, but sound advice for physicians and politicians. Crafters of the newly approved platform of the Democratic Party took it to • Read More »
Waiting for the Barbarians
August 16, 2020 | By eric.terzuolo | No Comments | Filed in: Historical Analogies, Immigration. 
Waiting for the Barbarians is certainly an imperfect movie. The performances by Robert Pattinson and Johnny Depp, for example, are one-dimensional, and the latter regrettably seems reduced to doing caricatures • Read More »
Tags: #thetartarsteppe, #waitingforthebarbarians, Alexandria, cavafy, coetzee