#western-values

#western-values

Almost a quarter of the world experienced democratic backsliding, or a shift towards autocratization, in 2025, and six of the 10 newly regressive countries identified in the research are located in Europe and North America, including G-7 powers such as Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Starting next month, the cost of renouncing your U.S. citizenship will go down dramatically - a boon for people already shouldering the burden of paying for a major overseas move. Anyone wishing to formally shed their American citizenship is required to obtain a form called a Certificate of Loss of Nationality, and right now it comes with a whopping $2,350 fee. In April, that fee will drop by 80% to $450.

The Walrus Debate asks a timely question: Can Politics Be Civil Again? It brings together former political leaders to model respectful disagreement and explore dialogue's role in rebuilding public trust.

There have never been more billionaires on the planet than in 2026: According to an Oxfam report released earlier this year, there are now more than 3,000 people sitting on 10-digit fortunes. Leading the ranks is Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has a net worth of $659 billion, followed by Alphabet cofounder Larry Page at $264 billion.

For a nation whose founding symbols were carefully engineered around the balance of peace and war, that omission is hard to read as accidental. Dropping the olive branch from the dime isn't just a design choice: it's a cultural signal.

The real Führer is always a judge. Out of Führerdom flows judgeship. One who wants to separate the two from each other or puts them in opposition to each other would have the judge be either the leader of the opposition or the tool of the opposition and is trying to unhinge the state with the help of the judiciary.

A record high of adults—80 percent—believes that Americans are divided on the most important values. National pride, trust in government, and confidence in institutions are near record lows. The Princeton University historian Sean Wilentz says the United States hasn't been this divided since the Civil War. Nearly half of Americans think another civil war is likely in their lifetime.

Around 2013 in Taiwan's context, when Facebook started to take over the digital ecosystem in Taiwan, many local independent bulletin boards that had been formed for sexual minorities were shut down because they had no income from advertisements, and people were pushed into mainstream platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Meta, whatever, Twitter now X where sexual expression was usually reported or flagged.

Like us, you may feel paralyzed in the face of the relentless images of violence we see every day. Suffering children, military occupations, the devastated neighborhoods, the cries of parents mourning their dead-these scenes haunt us. Whether it is happening in Palestine or Minneapolis, we are witnesses to suffering, and that witnessing takes a heavy toll. Clearly, the devastating situations in the West Bank and Gaza and in Minneapolis differ

Last week- after the Wall Street Journal broke more news about the Trump family's dodgy crypto-business dealings and before the President shared a racist video of the Obamas depicted as dancing apes-the Amazon entrepreneur Jeff Bezos decided that one of his smaller properties, the Washington Post, has proved such a drag on his two-hundred-and-thirty-billion-dollar fortune that prudence required that he obliterate much of its newsroom.

U.S. President Donald Trump, with his lust for Greenland and hectoring of Europe, thinks the world is at his mercy,and thatthe U.S. is invincible. He's right on the first point. But he discovered this week that he's wrong about the second one. In Davos at the World Economic Forum, Trump climbed down on his Greenland threats after his actions caused chaos in the markets.

The air feels heavier. And the struggles are changing shape. Beyond my office walls, the world is shifting, and my clients sense the tremors. The things they once trusted, global order, democratic norms, and even their own personal safety, no longer feel solid. They feel brittle, as if one strong wind could bring it all down. And what they're sensing isn't imagined.

In the early 20th century, sociologist Max Weber noted that sweeping industrialization would transform how societies worked. As small, informal operations gave way to large, complex organizations with clearly defined roles and responsibilities, leaders would need to rely less on tradition and charisma, and more on organization and rationality. He also foresaw that jobs would need to be broken down into specialized tasks and governed by a system of hierarchy,

A flag is certain the wind admires it -the breeze flaunting it so its crowns, leaves, crosses, bands of colour, or stars float in air, ready to be honoured, deferred to. In turn the flag at times pats the wind streaming past, confirming they stand together, believing the wind thinks of itself as Tunisian wind orAmerican wind. To people who live under the flag open in its glory, or relaxed against

"It is not the critic who counts," President Theodore Roosevelt once said. "The credit belongs to the man who is in the arena." The Heritage Foundation has been in the arena for many years, fighting many battles, so it's no surprise that it has attracted many critics as well. And while Heritage cannot claim perfection, this much is certain: We have stayed true to our mission despite the critics;

Collating data from the World Bank and other sources in innovative ways, he argues that globalization in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century was accompanied by then-unprecedented growth of income in both previously poor populations (notably in China) and people at the top of the world's income distribution (especially those in the West). By contrast, relative shares of world income stagnated or were thought to have declined for wealthy nations' middle and working classes, including in the United States.

"No, not yet. I am waiting until I am serious with someone, and until then, I am only doing oral and mutual masturbation. My reply, "That is sex!" This usually gets a response of, "Well, I meant f*cking," which they equate to sex. Nothing else. I have to remind my clients that fellatio and cunnilingus is called "oral sex" for a reason. That is still sex."

H ave you heard Solomon Ray's new album Faithful Soul? It's number one on the gospel charts-and entirely AI generated, just like the musical artist behind it. The idea that a hit Spotify artist might not be human is a satire of the attention economy itself: an ecosystem once based on authenticity and connection now topped by a synthetic voice engineered for maximum uplift. What does "soul" even mean when it's made by software trained on real music?

As we have seen, defending the right of people to speak, even when we deeply disagree with them, is very, very difficult. Many people perhaps most can't manage it. It can feel like a betrayal of self, a betrayal of values, and certainly a betrayal of one's community or cause. Nor is it sensible to expect it of everyone. But we must demand it of the custodians of our culture. This is the way forward.

To get the bad out of the way, its most important ally - the United States - has grown increasingly antagonistic, with renewed tariff threats and talk of annexation coming from the White House. On the upside, Canada is signaling it can stand more firmly on its own. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has identified a "rupture" in North American integration and is moving his country in a more self-sufficient direction - both economically and politically.

Three of the four things that gave Trump a foothold, in my opinion, were failures in this century (the fourth is the legacy of slavery and the organized political violence that replaced it). The other three, though, are the War on Terror, the financial crisis, and social media. (COVID was the final catalyst, I think; having moved during the height of COVID, I can't express how much worse the US dealt with it than much of the EU.)

When we talk about our inability to pay attention, to concentrate, we often mean and blame our phones. It's easy, it's meant to be easy. One flick of our index finger transports us from disaster to disaster, from crisis to crisis, from maddening lie to maddening lie. Each new unauthorized attack and threatened invasion grabs the headlines, until something else takes its place, and meanwhile the government's attempts to terrorize and silence the people of our country continue.

Left-leaning regions of the United States and elsewhere in the world among the richest? When Japan and South Korea sought to become economic powerhouses in the later 20th century, they adopted Leftist policies such as strong public education, universal healthcare and increased gender equality - if countries seeking to compete in capitalist arenas adopt broadly Leftist policies, then how do we explain why Leftists are always talking about overthrowing capitalism?

In the United States, we haven't yet seen rifles aimed at large crowds, but we do observe masked federal agents detaining protesters in unmarked vehicles, flashy ICE raids staged like military operations and pardons for political violence all clear warning signs. Ignoring this is the first step toward complacency, which can kill liberty. Fascism is often misunderstood. It is not just political oppression; it is a set of traits, as scholars and observers point out,

The academic and political activist discusses what he sees as a moral collapse in the US and a leadership crisis in the Democratic Party. In this episode of Talk to Al Jazeera, American philosopher and activist Cornel West delivers a searing critique of the United States, describing what he sees as moral collapse, democratic decay and spiritual bankruptcy. Drawing on the Black freedom struggle and his own run in the 2024 presidential election,

O n January 6, 2021, the day of the Capitol insurrection, many people were transfixed by what they saw in Washington. It was only a heroic effort by the police that kept the insurrectionists out of the House of Representatives, where elected members and staff took refuge behind chairs and under desks. In one sense, the riot, with its outlandish characters wearing costumes and face paint, felt like an absurd exclamation mark that punctuated the end of an erratic presidency.