“Streisand actually applauded a Niall Ferguson peroration praising the budgetary reforms of Paul Ryan.”

It’s not as though I distrust Ferguson so much as I’m wary of his analyses. I think that’s based, in part, on my attempt to read and then, when the read didn’t kick in, peruse his ‘The War of the World.’ In the space of two pages I found roughly four things that I considered (empahsize ‘that I considered’) to be in error and that doubly struck me as glib. I am also not a fan of the idea that America is an empire, and he is a proponent of that idea, which requires a rather wholesale change in the meaning of empire and accomodates a worldview that I find distasteful, and wrong.

Ferguson has an engaging personality and seems quite with it, but I am wary of his analyses, regardless of who he pleases.