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TIME OUT FROM ENGLISH GRAMMAR
This section features wide-ranging, thought-provoking articles in English on any subject under the sun. Its objective is to present new, mind-changing ideas as well as to show to serious students of English how the various tools of the language can be felicitously harnessed to report a momentous or life-changing finding or event, to espouse or oppose an idea, or to express a deeply felt view about the world around us.
The outstanding English-language expositions to be featured here will mostly be presented through links to the websites that carry them. To put a particular work in better context, links to critiques, biographical sketches, and various other material about the author and his or her works will usually be also provided.
I hope you’ll enjoy the new selections that will be presented here each week.Joe Carillo
Prescription for fixing America’s dysfunctional governing system
In an article he wrote for the January-February 2010 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, James Fallows, a national correspondent for the magazine, disagrees with the popular notion that America is going to hell and has gone into an irreversible decline. He admits that America has an alarming problem: “Our governing system is old and broken and dysfunctional. Fixing it—without resorting to a constitutional convention or a coup—is the key to securing the nation’s future.” But he remains upbeat about America’s future. “Our American republic may prove to be doomed,” he says, “but it will make a difference if we improvise and strive to make the best of the path through our time—and our children’s, and their grandchildren’s—rather than succumb.”
“We could start [regenerating America] by being very clear about our strengths, as revealed not simply by comparison with others but also through the pattern of our own rise,” Fallows says. “The mutually supportive combination of public and private development; the excellence of the universities; the unmatched ability to attract and absorb the world’s talent—these are assets we can work to preserve. We could reflect on how much more attainable our goals are when the world works with us—economically, diplomatically—rather than against us.”
Read James Fallows’ “How America Can Rise Again” in The Atlantic Monthly now!
About the Author:
James Fallows is a national correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly and has worked for the magazine for more than 25 years. He attended Harvard University, where he was president of the newspaper The Crimson. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1970 and then studied economics at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. He has been an editor of The Washington Monthly and of Texas Monthly, and from 1977 to 1979 he served as President Jimmy Carter's chief speechwriter.
His has written four books: Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy (January 1996), Free Flight: From Airline Hell to a New Age of Travel, Looking at the Sun (1994), and Blind into Baghdad: America’s War in Iraq (2006). An article he wrote in 1987 for the Atlantic Monthly, “A Damaged Culture: A New Philippines?”, became a finalist for the National Magazine Award in the United States and has remained the subject of controversy and attention in the Philippines.
Read James Fallows’ article “A Damaged Culture: A New Philippines?” now!
