Three decades of elite failure has polarized the United States fuel
During the 1760s and 1770s, the colonists in British North America faced a crisis, both at home and abroad. The crown was increasingly threatening colonists' right to self-governance, but not everyone agreed about how and when to rebel. Radicals pushed change forward, but political moderate John Hancock, and others like him, offered stability to the revolutionary movement and had a profound influence on pivotal events, including authorizing the Declaration of Independence and ratifying the Constitution.
Moderation is a contested concept that, with surprisingly few exceptions, has been absent
Former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott assesses the geopolitical challenge that China poses in the Indo-Pacific and how Western countries should respond. While no one can judge whether the chance of an assault on Taiwan is 50% or 10%, he warns the danger is high enough for serious countries to plan. The natural tendency for democracies to assume business-as-usual amounts to sleepwalking into crisis.
The American Civil War brought catastrophic costs to our nation and wrought serious internal changes. In addition to the staggering loss of life, the war erased billions of dollars of wealth and disrupted conventional patterns of life. However, these descriptions miss the most fundamental significance of the war - that it preserved the nation so that democracies could defend themselves against internal instability.
What is the value of a liberal education? Traditionally characterized by a rigorous engagement with the classics of Western thought and literature, this approach to education is all but extinct in American universities, replaced by flexible distribution requirements and ever-narrower academic specialization. Many academics attack the very idea of a Western canon as chauvinistic, while the general public increasingly doubts the value of the humanities.
Bureaucracy and Democracy: Are ‘We the People’ in Charge Any More? with Timothy Sandefur Timothy Sandefur is the Vice President for Legal Affairs at the Goldwater Institute’s Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation and holds the Duncan Chair in Constitutional Government. Sandefur was named the Barry Goldwater Chair in American Institutions at ASU for 2023-2024. We all learned in school about “how a bill becomes a law.” But most of the laws that govern our lives aren’t actually written by elected representatives at all.
The greatest peril to our country comes not from threats abroad but angry divisions at home that undermine citizenship. The Bill of Obligations sets forth a plan of action for civic education to revitalize American Democracy. Dr. Richard Haass is president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations and senior counselor with Centerview Partners. A former Director of Policy Planning at the US State Department and veteran diplomat, he has served in four presidential administrations.
The great civil rights leaders Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King Jr. both understood themselves to be American patriots but offered very different proposals for promoting the country’s welfare. Professor Lucas Morel contrasts their views, noting the strengths of each, to draw lessons for 21st-century America. Lucas Morel is the John K. Boardman, Jr. Professor of Politics and Head of the Politics Department at Washington and Lee University.