Governments now answer to business, not voters. Mainstream parties grow ever harder to distinguish. Is democracy dead? Last September, Il Partito Democratico, the Italian Democratic Party, asked me to talk about politics and the internet at its summer school in Cortona. Political summer schools are usually pleasant — Cortona is a medieval Tuscan hill town ...

Hypocrisy has a bad connotation, but it offers a useful middle course in the world of geopolitics; it once lubricated the engine of U.S. power. A world where the United States abandoned all ideals and values would be cowardly and vicious. On the other hand, a world where words and deeds always and transparently matched ...