RITE OF SPRING A couple reclines under sakura boughs, taking part in the hanami flower-viewing in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden on April 6 as the blossoming period neared its end. For centuries, people in Japan have celebrated the roughly two week each year between the first bud’s opening and the last petal’s falling by gathering for picnics or outdoor parties.
As much as cherries are enjoyed worldwide, in Japan the relationship between people and cherry blossom (sakura) goes far deeper than floricultural appreciation. As a Japanese friend once told me, for many the cherry blossom is Japan, or at least a potent symbol of the national character of the Japanese people. Historically the short but spectacular flowering season of the cherry was viewed as an allegory for the frequently brief but glorious life of the samurai, prompting the saying, “The cherry is among flowers as the samurai is among men.”
Cherry blossom is strongly associated with the cultural tradition of mono no aware, the awareness of the impermanence and transience of things, and consequent restrained sadness for their passing. Unsurprisingly, sakura features heavily in Japanese art, in particular traditional ukiyo-e woodblock printing, and memorably in Hiroshige’s “Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji”.
Generation gap 39% of voters 60 and over believe that Indispensable is the best choice for American foreign policy While… 41% of voters 44 and below prefer the Independent path
MARCH 7, 2014 Millennials in Adulthood Detached from Institutions, Networked with Friends The Millennial generation is forging a distinctive path into adulthood. Now ranging in age from 18 to 331, they are relatively unattached to organized politics and religion, linked by social media, burdened by debt, distrustful of people, in no rush to marry— and optimistic about the future.
They are also America’s most racially diverse generation. In all of these dimensions, they are different from today’s older generations. And in many, they are also different from older adults back when they were the age Millennials are now.
Pew Research Center surveys show that half of Millennials (50%) now describe themselves as political independents and about three-in-ten (29%) say they are not affiliated with any religion. These are at or near the highest levels of political and religious disaffiliation recorded for any generation in the quarter-century that the Pew Research Center has been polling on these topics.
（ロングマン） isolationism beliefs or actions that are based on the political principle that your country should not be involved in the affairs of other countries
This might sound like isolationism, a term that’s been the kiss of death in U.S. politics since World War II. But that word is an unfair dismissal of every legitimate concern Americans have about the obvious foreign policy excesses and costly miscalculations of their government. Those who want Washington to declare independence from the need to play Superman believe that the U.S. has profound potential that’s been wasted in mistakes overseas. Imagine for a moment that every dollar spent in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past dozen years had been spent instead to empower Americans and their economy. Redirect the attention, energy and resources we now squander on a failed superhero foreign policy toward building the America we imagine, one that empowers all its people to realize their human potential.
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These are not isolationist values. The U.S. should continue to export and import goods and ideas, and welcome the citizens of other countries who would come to America legally, as millions have done since our founding. The U.S. should also accept more of the world’s refugees, whose numbers are now at the highest level since the end of World War II. The civil war in Syria has forced up to 4 million people to flee their country, yet the U.S. has so far accepted fewer than 1,000 of them. “Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” That’s a principle, inscribed in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, that Americans can be proud of–and one on which we’ve too often fallen short.
ブレマー氏はIndependentを支持していると記事で明言していましたが、キッシンジャー氏が昨年出した本World OrderではAmerican leadership has been indispensableとindispensableの立場で、What it does not permit is withdrawalとしていたんですよね。このあたりの意見の違いも面白いと思いました。
Throughout, American leadership has been indispensable, even when it has been exercised ambivalently. It has sought a balance between stability and advocacy of universal principles not always reconcilable with principles of sovereign noninterference or other nations’ historical experience. The quest for that balance, between the uniqueness of the American experience and the idealistic confidence in its universality, between the poles of overconfidence and introspection, is inherently unending. What it does not permit is withdrawal.
ブライアンレーラーのラジオにも登場されていました。 Ian Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group and the author of Superpower: Three Choices for America's Role in the World (Portfolio, 2015), outlines three options for future U.S. foreign policy: independence, economic, and indispensability and the benefits and drawbacks for each.
Women who advocate for other women are often pigeonholed and pushed to the margins. That hasn’t happened to Hillary, because when she’s standing up for the rights of women and girls, she is speaking not only of gender but also of justice and liberty.
As Hillary has always made clear, these values are universal, and fulfilling them is a practical and moral pursuit. She is a realist with a conscience and an idealist who is comfortable with the exercise of power.
最後のPowell Jobs is the founder and chair of Emerson Collectiveでもなんかピンとこなかったし、Emerson Collectiveのサイトもいったのですが、社会起業家を支援する団体ということしかわからなかったです。まあ、アメリカ人でも同じ印象のようで、こんな動画が作られていました。
Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of the late Steve Jobs, is making a name for herself as a political and social influencer. She is the founder and chair of the Emerson Collective, an organization that focuses on using entrepreneurship to advance social reform and help under-resourced students, and College Track, a nonprofit college completion program. In conjunction with President Obama's "My Brother's Keeper" program, Emerson Collective and its partners announced a $50 million commitment in July 2014 to collaborate with certain school districts to design better high school programs. She is among the top donors to super PAC Ready for Hillary. She makes regular visits to Capitol Hill to discuss pathways to citizenship for children of illegal immigrants. The Laurene Powell Jobs Trust is the largest individual shareholder in Disney, with a 7.7% slice of the company. An angel investor, she is a backer and board member at startup Ozy Media. She also sits on Stanford's Board of Trustees.
