Caligula liked to roll around on a pile of gold coins.
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Saturday, August 26, 2017
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Liza Donnelly
[When a Great Nation Suffers an Unstable Leaderâ¦](
[My column today]( is a bit different. It looks at what happens when the people of a superpower gradually come to realize that their leader is mentally unstable (and thanks to Liza Donnelly for the cartoon of Caligula above). There are lessons to be learned, [so read!](
The Times has [an important article]( noting that blacks and Latinos are even more underrepresented in university now than in 1980. In short, affirmative action policies havenât helped as much as we might have hoped. To me, one of the lessons is the need to start earlier to create opportunity. The evidence is overwhelming that early childhood education is essential to get disadvantaged kids on a better footing so that they can eventually get into college a dozen or more years later. Rather than invest in a border wall, Iâd like to see the U.S. invest in early childhood programs for every at-risk child.
Jack Rosenthal, a long-time editor at the Times, [has died]( at the age of 82 (RIP, Jack), and his passing has me thinking about a famous government report he edited in 1968 warning that the United States is moving âtoward two societies, separate and unequal.â Thatâs still true. Weâve made some progress in reducing race gaps, but class gaps have become wider â and the challenges for a black or Native American child in a disadvantaged family are particularly great. Whatâs frustrating is that we know some of the policies that will help, and they mostly involve investing in children, especially young children.
My [Thursday column]( challenged President Trump in his denunciations of the news media, and one of my concerns is that he buoys dictators around the world who are trying to muzzle their own journalists. I wonder if one example of that isnât now unfolding in Cambodia, where the autocratic government of Prime Minister Hun Sen is moving to close down the Cambodia Daily, a critically important watchdog there. I hope the U.S. will forcefully back the Cambodia Daily.
We raised our kids speaking Chinese, so friends often ask us if we recommend it. The answerâs [complicated]( but I definitely believe that all American kids should learn Spanish, which will be an increasingly important language in the U.S. My colleague Simon Romero offers [a glimpse]( of this bilingual future and notes that the U.S. already may have more Spanish speakers than Spain.
Hereâs a [powerful editorial]( about the man-made famine in Yemen, and the U.S. and Saudi role in making it happen.
And now for [my column today]( about a megalomaniacal, probably crazy leader of a great nation, a greedy narcissist who rolled around on piles of gold coins, who dressed as a god (when he wasnât cross-dressing), who apparently slept with his sister, who said he could get away with anything â yet who eventually was defeated because of the robustness of institutions and traditions. [Read!](
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