Adam Lior Hirst
Adam Lior Hirst
Recent Stories
Hirst: Learning to be free
Commentary
Over the past year, I have used this space to argue, esoterically and exoterically, for America to take an active role in promoting the spread of liberalism and freedom abroad. I explicated the strategy and the tactics and argued it was keeping with our best traditions, national interest and moral obligation as prudent revolutionaries. I’ve written as if there are no limits to freedom.
Hirst: Time to go Dutch
“Beneath the level of myth and politics and high ideals,” Russell Shorto writes in his 2004 book “The Island at the Center of the World,” “down where people live and interact, Manhattan is where America began.” Shorto’s moving narrative chronicles the Dutch influence on Manhattan from Henry Hudson’s 1609 settling of the Bay to Peter Stuyvesant’s 1664 surrender of New Amsterdam to the British, who would promptly rename it after King James II — the Duke of York. Shorto’s thesis is that the Dutch spirit of openness and free trade, long understudied in contemporary universities without Dutch departments, is as important in shaping America as the British of John Winthrop’s Massachusetts Bay Colony or John Smith’s Virginia Colony.
Hirst: More than a game
We can better understand a foreign people by walking to a local park and watching a game of basketball than observing a session of parliament. There is a tension, unique to the sport, between the interests of the team and the individual — the game tempts players to improve their statistics at the expense of team success. Watching players balance this tension not only makes basketball a beautiful game, but also provides insight into individual and communal aspirations.
Hirst: Our information overload
Commentary
When I was 5, my parents let me watch television so that I would be familiar with the shows my peers were watching. When I was 14, I purchased my first cell phone. When I was 21, I first used a BlackBerry. And when I’m 50, I’ll probably elect to have a chip implanted so I can read my e-mail by just thinking about reading it.
Hirst: My, and our, bracket problem
Commentary
Ever since my third grade teacher, Mr. Campbell, awarded packs of sports cards for answering math questions correctly, basketball has been my great passion. I slept with a basketball throughout high school. I played at the local park during conditions when the mailman (a uniformed federal employee, not Karl Malone) wouldn’t deliver. I’ve been known to park my car while driving by a pickup game and call “next” on sight. Recently, I lent a friend David Halberstam’s book on Michael Jordan, “Playing for Keeps” and won’t let him return it because I read it more often than Eric Massa gets into tickle fights. Though I no longer have illusions of owning a professional team, I intend to play for one someday.
Hirst: Comic books to the rescue
Commentary
For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved comic books. My earliest memories (and cutest baby pictures) are of my dad and me dressed up as Superdad and Superbaby, attending Purim festivities as Betman (the Hebraic equivalent of Batman), waiting in line for Space Mountain at Disney World as my dad told me the origin story of Captain America, at Passover Seder observing the similarities between Moses being cast on the waters of the Nile and Superman being launched from Krypton to Earth and asking my dad why the Guardians of the Universe in the Green Lantern comic books looked like David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister.
Hirst: Questions worth asking
Commentary
Early one morning last week I stepped out of Branford entryway D and walked through the college courtyard Robert Frost purportedly described as the most beautiful in America. I saw the grass covered with a thick coating of snow; the flakes which hadn’t yet landed, rested atop the Gothic architecture and the tree limbs bare of leaves.
Hirst: Charlie Wilson’s charge
Commentary
A disproportionate number of the men I revere were Cold Warriors. Presidents Truman, Kennedy and Reagan, Senator Scoop Jackson, Pope John Paul II, boxer Rocky Balboa — these men saw the Soviet Union for the totalitarian regime that it was and sought to relegate it to the ash heap of history. Last week, another Cold Warrior and personal hero, Congressman Charlie Wilson, passed away at 76.
Hirst: To seek and not to yield
This past Saturday, my sister and I were hiking Fifth Avenue toward F.A.O. Schwarz when we spotted a place with even more toys and games: the main branch of the New York Public Library. We stopped and took notice.
Lior Hirst: Profiles in politics
Commentary
What will happen to our politics when candidates’ Facebook profiles replace fan pages and campaign Web sites as primary sources of information about a candidate?