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David Bromwich, professor of literature at Yale University, discusses the Mideast protests that threaten US-allied autocrats and embarrass the empire; the mealy-mouthed government statements borne of an hypocritical foreign policy; burdensome obligations of the omnipresent US empire; and those interventionist think-tank writers who advocate a Libyan no-fly zone without knowing squat about the forces in play.

MP3 here. (20:00)

David Bromwich teaches literature at Yale. He has written on politics and culture for Huffington Post, The New Republic, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, and other magazines. He is editor of Edmund Burke’s selected writings On Empire, Liberty, and Reform and co-editor of the Yale University Press edition of On Liberty.