Once a wary non entity, he has grown bolder. His is the face of Putin s new Russia, of a smug Russia that is getting off its knees and reaching for its gun.

OK, so, I initially felt really superior to these boys, and smug in my more conventional faith. But then, the more I thought about it, the more I had to be honest with myself.

Today, however, the reigning Republican orthodoxy is a kind of smug pseudo Friedmanism that believes that markets left to themselves can do no wrong. Perhaps it is time for another breath of fresh air.

But before foreign observers get too smug, consider the other solution to America s unfinished revolution. Valuing care means valuing it enough to expect men to take on caregiving responsibilities to the same extent that we now expect women to take on breadwinning.

These claims began to be made by respectable conservatives, and even some social democrats, in the 1990 s. They reacted against a rather smug liberal establishment that tended to dismiss all critical thought about immigration or non Western faiths and traditions as racism and bigotry.

But that book s potency originally derived from its fierce independence from contemporary orthodoxies. Friedman s voice was a skeptical breath of fresh air at a time when the reigning viewpoint was a kind of smug pseudo socialism that did not recognize the astounding power of markets to accomplish desirable aims.

But that book s potency originally derived from its fierce independence from contemporary orthodoxies. Friedman s voice was a skeptical breath of fresh air at a time when the reigning viewpoint was a kind of smug pseudo socialism that did not recognize the astounding power of markets to accomplish desirable aims.

And I, like many others, will not try to hide my satisfaction at seeing the smug scoundrels of the FN break down and resume speaking in their historic register, with their authentic voice, which is one of hatred and mob rage. This, truly, was a victory for the republic a triumph of popular resistance.

But, on the other side of the Atlantic, Americans have no reason to feel smug. Summers could have used the same metaphor to criticize the United States, where the continued focus on the long run funding dilemmas of social insurance is sucking all of the oxygen out of efforts to deal with America s macroeconomic and unemployment crisis.

Those of you who are comfortable with digital stuff and even smug about that relationship might be amused to know that the guy who is best known for The Way Things Work, while preparing for part of a panel for called Understanding, spent two days trying to get his laptop to communicate with his new CD burner.

After all, Richard Nixon s race against John Kennedy in 1960 is said to have been lost on television Kennedy looked cool and handsome, while Nixon scowled into the camera, with sweat trickling down his five o clock shadow. In his debates with Ronald Reagan in 1980, Jimmy Carter came across as smug and humorless, and Reagan as a friendly old uncle.