What counts as a healthy society in America is a perennial concern. Today, as we live increasingly atomized lives, social cohesion and strengthening are more important than ever.
Topics
Trump v. Affirmative Action
Many now believe that, after generations of persistence, affirmative action is finally about to die. They're wrong.
The Breaking Point of a Republic
The history of citizenship is not a simple story of inclusion and progress. It's also a story of strain.
The Necessary Limits of Mercy
Americans have always been unusually vulnerable to appeals framed in the language of mercy, equality, and procedural justice.
Affirmative Action: Our ‘Unslayable Ghoul’
No matter how often it is invalidated, condemned, or banned, it returns — reshaped, renamed, and newly justified.
Posts
Playing ‘War’ at Sarah Lawrence
This may be the first generation of utopians who want to wage a revolution without spilling their lattes.
The Issue that Breaks the Blue Narrative
Republicans can make rampant fraud the central midterm issue, hold the House, and start dismantling the plunder state. Anything less is surrender.
First Man of the Universe
Benjamin Franklin was a great man, not just for his time, but for all time.
When the Press Chose Sides
In the emerging cold civil war, media institutions discovered that intensity could substitute for breadth — but only within defined political camps.
The Long Game in the Legal Academy
Conservatives have often lacked the strategic sense to build mission-oriented institutions. We must change that.
American New Year
Winter has turned to spring, summer to fall, and back to winter. This cosmic new beginning inspires a kind of Napoleonic ambition.
American Christmas
Over the generations, out of many ways of celebrating or ignoring Christmas, came a recognizably American way.
What ‘Diversity Is Our Strength’ Really Means
The vicious cycle of replacement immigration creates societies at once less stable and less free. That's the point.
Days to Remember
“No date in the long history of freedom means more to liberty-loving men ... than the fifteenth day of December 1791.”
When the Melting Pot Stops Working
The "melting pot" is an insultingly reductive analogy that ignores what the Founders knew: our experiment is fragile.
Protect Those Who Power the Cause
Ideas alone don't win elections, nor do they win political or cultural fights. To sustain the movement at large, the GOP needs money.
Pearl Harbor and the Art of Peace
Next to the people themselves, the land they live on is the most fundamental and necessary material condition of political life.