Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Myth of Post-industrialism

By Eamonn Fingleton America’s shuttered factories and the false hope of post-industrialism. (This article first appeared in the November-December 2022 issue of The American Conservative.) In the wake of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the American nation … Continue reading

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The rise of East Asia and an epochal threat to American freedoms

By Eamonn Fingleton (This article appears in the January-February 2022 issue of The American Conservative. To read it in pdf form,  please click here.) In April 1998 Sony Corporation chairman Norio Ohga made world headlines with this comment: “The Japanese economy … Continue reading

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On VJ Day, a hard look at an atom bomb apologist

By Eamonn Fingleton If you Google “Laurens van der Post” and “Hiroshima”, you’ll turn up hundreds of thousands of results. This confirms something that some observers have known for years: that though the South African-born author Laurens van der Post … Continue reading

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Was the Hiroshima bomb justified?

By Eamonn Fingleton It is a question that comes up every year: was the atomic bombing of Hiroshima justified? This year — the 75th anniversary of the attack — the question seems more pertinent than ever. The bombing, which took … Continue reading

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Beyond free trade

Meet the heterodox economists challenging globalism. (This article was first published in the April 2011 issue of the American Conservative.) “I don’t care who writes a nation’s laws, or crafts its advanced treatises, if I can write its economics textbooks.” … Continue reading

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The Fingleton invitation: some reaction

It turns out — surprise — that not everyone thinks the Japanese economy is a basket case. A few days ago I issued an invitation to ten top Japan watchers to a debate on what has really happened to the … Continue reading

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America’s bases: collateral damage for the US economy

America’s foreign military bases are bad business. (This article first appeared in the January 2011 issue of the American Conservative.) TOKYO. When German executives visit Tokyo, they are often treated to a session at Bernd’s Bar, a notably authentic German pub. … Continue reading

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The wrong-way Corrigans who engineered the U.S. train wreck

America’s decline counts as probably the most precipitate in history. So who’s to blame? America’s ideology-blinded media have a lot to answer for. As recently as 1965, when I started college, America had the world at its feet. Its decline … Continue reading

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Reactions to my Chang/Kamen review

My review of Paula Kamen’s recent biography of Iris Chang was posted at CounterPunch.org just two days ago. Reader reaction has been fast and sometimes furious. Judging by the scale and tone of responses to my review of Paula Kamen’s … Continue reading

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