From their early Puritan days Americans have painted their politics with Biblical imagery.

We think of economics as “the dismal science” in part because it tries to bracket the question of values, opting for mere description and impersonal laws.

Political life must operate at some intuitive level on a coherence between views of the self and modes of governance.

In last week’s essay, we looked at how ideas of “the sacred,” violence, and suffering congeal into our modern notions of victimhood, and our tendency to grant moral status to “victims.”

We have argued in this space that the state of democracy in America is both worse and better than people think.

One of the more satisfying parts of this job has been engaging in partnerships with other organizations and presidential centers and foundations dedicated to serving the public weal and strengthening democratic norms and practices.

Last week we discussed Rousseau’s idea that “the act that constitutes the republic isn’t part of its constitution,” done by a “lawgiver” “able to see all men’s passions without having any of them.”

Last week I gave a brief introduction to the thinking of Eric Voegelin, but more importantly to the problem of Gnosticism.

One question I like asking people is, if they went to college, which books had a special impact on either their thinking or their general approach to life.

In my former life as a professor, and in my current non-professional life, I’ve advocated for a school of thought called “localism.”

Much of our lives become embroiled in and defined by our obsessions with things “fleeting and failing,” but we can never silence the still, small voice within us that tells us to seek for truth and meaning beyond the ephemera.

I’ve long claimed that, in a republican system of government, if presidential elections become the system’s central feature then that system is already in deep trouble.

In an earlier essay, we talked about the problem of whether we can trust our senses.

We’ve been subjected a great deal to the claim that we live in unprecedented times, but I suspect that only our liberal use of the term counts as unprecedented.

My mother had a democratic head and an aristocratic heart.

One of the things we’ve been very eager to pursue are partnerships with other publicly-minded organizations, particularly those who are addressing our democratic deficits.

In his debate with Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln asserted, "With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed."

One of my standard tropes in my teaching days was to caution students against succumbing to “the tyranny of the present.”

Last week I offered up Part 1 of this two-part response to David Brooks’ Atlantic essay “How America Got Mean.”

In recent years, we’ve heard a lot of talk about assaults on “our democracy” and about protecting “our democracy,” usually from people we might call “elites” in government and the news media.