I look at the practice of democracy not so much as a fixed set of procedural requirements, but as a process that needs to have certain kinds of symbolic markers and consummations that define where people are in relation to each other.
When people’s personal friendship networks become more religiously diverse, that seems to make them more accepting of other faiths, but it also turns out that if you add friends within a congregation, more church friends, you actually become more civically engaged.
We have become a nation and a people that simply cannot abide risks.
Much like the old wars of religion that shaped Europe, the new wars are fought on the ground of the image.
The role of frank speech in democratic culture is something worth considering, especially in light of the renewed ferment over political correctness.
Between Jefferson’s profession of faith in the virtues of republican simplicity and the style of his own life the contradiction could hardly be greater.
Today the threat against liberalism is one of atrophy rather than violent death.
Far from being the hope of cosmopolitan liberal democracy, Europe is experiencing a reemergence of the national identities and antagonisms that European values and the union they were meant to bring about were supposed to prevent.
The post-Auschwitz consensus that made overt anti-Semitism strictly forbidden is rapidly fading.
If there is one, overarching, redeemable quality to our moment, it is that ours is a time in which there can only be alternatives.
Can neoliberalism’s conceptual structure be traced directly to medieval Western Christianity?
The highly abstract and immaterial phantom economy is inextricable from the “real economy.”
While structures of power may change quickly, the building of a new social order is a longer and more precarious process.
Untruth—information that could be described as unverified, misleading, or an out-and-out lie—has been spreading with new ease and abandon, and often to undemocratic effect.
Liberalism today finds itself in the strange position of being the political philosophy that everyone lives by and no one wants to defend.
Is modern-day philanthropy a disease in the democratic body politic?
The personal diet has become not only a cult; it has become a political statement.
We are living through a vertigo in political culture.
A neglected hard-boiled novelist wrote on the greatest conspiracy of all.
Both Donald Trump and Oprah Winfrey endorse the same belief: that there are only winners and losers.
As a child, I thought that to be American was to believe in individuality, to support pluralism and equality, and to celebrate common holidays and eat common foods.
Could the great size of companies like Apple and Walmart actually be a good thing?
Writing a book about Thomas Jefferson means entering a very crowded field.
For Marc J. Dunkelman, the verdict is clear: “The township, in essence, is dying.”
Bernie Sanders at Liberty University is more than a momentary truce in the culture war.
Do Trump’s supporters represent a new Know-Nothing movement?
As we remember the Challenger disaster, let’s not forget the engineers who tried to convince NASA not to send up the Space Shuttle on a cold morning thirty years ago.
In identifying “the system” as the issue of this election, Trump has managed to find a singular concept by which to encompass issues from wage stagnation to political corruption.
Many began watching last night’s debate wondering: Which Trump would it be? But there’s only one.
Just as Obama became a symbol of progressive diversity, Trump has become a symbol of longing for a pre-Obama America.
A zero sum reality, in which every win is someone else’s loss, exists in a constant state of crisis.
Liberalism today finds itself in the strange position of being the political philosophy that everyone lives by and no one wants to defend.
In France, wearing a COVID-19 mask will mean a real revolution in norms governing behavior in its public space.
The point of reopening is not to free voluntary workers but to place more into the category of “mandatory worker.”
Who will emerge as the new elite from this particular moment’s cast of winners and losers?
Herzen won’t stop striving for social transformation with every ounce of energy he has, but also won’t pick up Chernyshevsky’s axe.