Jim Manzi's conservative reform manifesto in National Affairs has attracted all sorts of praise on the right. And Manzi does have some interesting observations and decent proposals. His main premise is that there's an inherent tension between economic dynamism and social cohesion. Conservatives, he argues, must oppose the Democrats' growth-stifling social democratic agenda without going so in the other direction that they allow the the social fabric to rend.

The president came out of Oslo a different man than when he went, and Simon Schama has traced the lineaments of the change in a column in today's Financial Times. It is a sharp break for the administration which had spent its first nine months telling the rotten world that it was good and somehow persuaded itself of the nobility of the lie.

One cannot overemphasize the drama of the change for which West Point was an ambiguous and ambivalent beginning.

President Obama gave a pretty good speech when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize. Maybe it was a little too eloquent. I don’t much like soaring rhetoric; I know there are times to soar, but Obama does it, or tries to do it, every time. Plain speech is also useful, and there was some plain speech in Norway—particularly the reiterated insistence, directed, I think, to our European friends, that sometimes making war is the only way to a just peace.

This is certainly one way to entice people into plug-in vehicles:

Perhaps the main reason to think electric cars might have a shot in Denmark is their remarkable tax advantage.

Over a decade ago, I trundled my good-natured family across miles of southern Switzerland to see every building I could by Peter Zumthor, who is this year's winner of the Pritzker Prize. Then as now, most of Zumthor's work was off the beaten track, not only literally but metaphorically, little known to the general public although admired by professionals. What drew me to make the trek to his work was what, from pictures, appeared to be its conceptual rigor, its unabashed monumentality, and an attention to detail so fanatical that every threshold, corner, and joint seemed to become an opportunity to rethink the way hands make buildings.

The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace
By Ali A. Allawi
(Yale University Press, 518 pp., $28)
 

The other day, as I was walking to the grocery store, I strategically moved toward the far edge of the sidewalk to put distance between myself and a pile of large, black trash bags haphazardly stacked against the side of a building. This sight is common in downtown Manhattan, as was the rustling I heard among the bags, which nevertheless made me start. Rats or mice, I thought, as I instinctively crossed the street to avoid them, but it was still light out, too early, it seemed to me, for these nocturnal creatures to be rummaging for food.