By Fareed Zakaria, CNN

I've been watching the Republicans on the campaign trail and what strikes me so far is that conservatives in America have gone through a strange transformation.

It used to be that conservatism was a hard-headed set of ideas rooted in reality.

Unlike the abstract theories of Marxism and socialism, it started not from an imagined society, but from the world as it actually exists.

"This is the way things work," conservatives would patiently explain to wooly headed liberal professors. "Whatever you may want it to look like, this is what it really looks like."

But consider the debates over the economy these days. The Republican prescription is cut taxes - slash government spending, then things will always bounce back.

Now, I would like to see lower tax rates in the context of simplification and reform, but what is the actual evidence that massive tax cuts are the single best path to revive the U.S. economy? Taxes as a percentage of GDP are at their lowest levels since 1950. The U.S. is among the lowest taxed of the big industrial economies.

So the case that America is grinding to a halt because of high taxation is not based on facts, either past or present. It is simply a theoretical assertion. FULL POST

By Fareed Zakaria, CNN

All the talk these days in the United States and in Europe is about deficit and debt.

In Washington, the battle over America's debt ceiling continues. But let me tell you about the real crisis we face in America (and Europe has its own version of this), a crisis that could cripple America's economy and its society and would make the debt problem much, much worse.

It is America's jobs crisis. FULL POST

We've just gone through an arcane debate about whether Barack Obama said anything new when he called for an Israeli-Palestinian settlement based on 1967 borders with mutually agreed upon land swaps. In fact, that has been the working assumption of all negotiating parties - America, Israel and the Palestinian Authority - for over 20 years. It is what the Camp David talks of 2000 were based on; it's what former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's talks with the Palestinians was based on.

The newsworthy and real shift in U.S. policy was President Obama publicly condemning the Palestinian strategy to seek recognition as a state from the U.N. General Assembly in September.

Instead of thanking Obama for this, Prime Minister Netanyahu chose to stage, in the words of the former Israeli diplomat Alon Pinkas, "Nothing less than a bizarre tirade at the White House on Friday, educating the president about the plight and the pogroms of Jews throughout history."

So why did Netanyahu do this? Does it help Israel's security or strengthen it otherwise to stoke tensions with its strongest ally and largest benefactor, Washington? Does such behavior further the resolution of Israel's problems? FULL POST

By Fareed Zakaria, CNN

President Obama's "Arab Spring" speech was remarkably comprehensive. It described the events that we now call the "Arab Spring" and explained their causes and consequences.

President Obama placed the United States squarely behind the democratic wave in the region, though he didn't specifically mention one country - Saudi Arabia - where America's interests and values most obviously clash.

I don't blame him. Street protests in Saudi Arabia might warm our hearts, but they could easily lead to $250-a-barrel oil and a global recession. That's a tough one.

Obama outlined specific policies to help consolidate the Arab revolutions. All good stuff.

And he also talked about the need for a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - two states based on 1967 borders with land swaps that both parties agreed to, and a Palestinian partner that renounced terror - a blow at Hamas.

FULL POST

There is a silly debate taking place in Washington about who deserves credit for Osama bin Laden's assassination - President Obama or President Bush.

John F. Kennedy once said that victory has a thousand fathers, so can we admit that lots of people - thousands beyond those two people - deserve credit?

The outcome is the culmination of years of intelligence and action, but this specific operation was obviously conceived, planned and executed by the Obama administration, which deserves genuine respect for handling it well.

But the real lesson that we should be drawing from it is that counterterrorism works. Counterterrorism is our most important and effective strategy in the war on terror. FULL POST

This week's big news is that Leon Panetta and David Petraeus will move into new jobs, running the Pentagon and the CIA respectively. They're excellent appointments, but I hope that they will use the occasion to have a major rethink about the way we handle international crises.

The vast American national security bureaucracy has become a world unto itself - massively funded, geared to its own strange internal dynamics and rarely subjected to external tests.

Consider the intelligence community: We spend about $80 billion on intelligence every year, more than the rest of the world put together. And yet we seem perpetually unprepared for global events. The CIA did not imagine the fall of the Soviet Union, the revolutions of Eastern Europe, the break-up of Yugoslavia, September 11th, Saddam Hussein's nonexistent arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, the global financial crisis, and, most recently, the Arab Spring. FULL POST

Everyone has been in a panic this week over America's impending fiscal collapse, but I think the reality is that America does not face an immediate debt crisis. Take a look at the simplest indicator, the day that Standard & Poor's raised its now famous warnings about America's debt, markets decided to lower America's borrowing costs and the dollar rose against its principal alternative, the euro.

The real problem for America may well be that it does not face a short-term crisis. FULL POST

The big news this past week was President Obama's speech on the budget. It was an important, smart speech - with one major failing, which I will get to.

But for those of you wondering what Obama stands for - what his core beliefs are - I would suggest that you read or watch the speech. It was an intelligent, passionate defense of his view of America and of the role of government.

It is left of center, but not that far from the center.

FULL POST

The good news is that Congressman Paul Ryan, the Republican chair of the House Budget Committee, has put out a budget plan for the next year and beyond that tries to tackle America's biggest long-term problem –entitlement spending that is careening out of control.

The bad news is that his plan wouldn't work.

But I still applaud him for his courage in taking on the toughest topic and for proposing painful remedies. Any solution to Medicare will involve cuts and they will be unpopular.

So, what's wrong with Ryan's plan?

Well, it's an odd proposal from a man who seems genuinely committed to a solution to the U.S. fiscal crisis.

FULL POST

Let's talk for a moment about the Quran burning in Florida and its consequences. Most Americans are repulsed by the offensive actions of Pastor Terry Jones, a publicity-seeking extremist. But they must wonder how an isolated act like that could produce so much violence halfway across the world in Afghanistan.

So let's trace the event.

The Quran burning took place two weeks ago – to not much publicity. It was not highlighted by the international media and was not a big story in Afghanistan. There had been a few small, peaceful protests last Wednesday.

Then, Afghan President Hamid Karzai decided to try to capitalize on the issue and score some political points.

Last Thursday he made a speech loudly condemning the burning and calling for the arrest of Pastor Jones. But having lived in America, Karzai understands well that people cannot be arrested here for engaging in free speech, which includes burning flags or books.

Karzai's speech opened the door for Imams across the country to use their pulpits on Friday to call for protests and more.

That is when all hell broke loose.

FULL POST