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Self-Help for Crazed Democratic Souls
View of Hollywood Boulevard by night. (View Apart/Shutterstock.com)James Poulos' Art of Being Free is the kind of self-help book democratic souls really need.
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Tocqueville and the Promise of Classical Education
Statue of Plato, Academy of Athens, Greece (Shutterstock.com)In trying to offer relevance, universities have abandoned classical education and liberal learning - Tocqueville reminds us what we've lost...
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The Spontaneous Association of The Sandlot
Still from The Sandlot (Twentieth Century Fox)Lacking a sense of community, parents don't trust their neighbors enough to let their kids play alone, The Sandlot reminds us of another way to live.
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Tocqueville Was Not a Prophet of American Doom
The late Tocqueville scholar Peter Augustine Lawler used to say that Tocqueville believed things were “getting better–and worse–all the time.”
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Tocqueville and the Tragedy of the Democratic Average
Li Wa / Shutterstock.comConservatism should help us negotiate the tragic tradeoffs of life: a way between market and political liberalism versus solidarity. Tocqueville can help.
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France’s Psychodrama of 1968
"Choses vues en mai," "Things Seen in May," by Jean Helion, 1968-69 (alamy.com)Those who loathe and those who celebrate May 1968 agree it was a defining moment for Western democracy in its late modern...
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Remembering Peter Augustine Lawler
Peter Augustine Lawler in 2011 (Zac Calvert/Union University).Peter Augustine Lawler died a year ago today: here are some tributes and our favorites among his essays for Law and Liberty.
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What the Court Misses: Religion, Community, and the Bases of Ordered Liberty
Pilgrims signing the Mayflower Compact in 1620, depicted in bas relief panel on base of the Pilgrim Monument, Provincetown, Massachusetts (Lee Snider Photo Images/Shutterstock.com).We need to...
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Being Honest about Social and Economic Mobility
The Palace of Versailles in 2017 (Andre Quinou/Shutterstock.com).To be sure, Tocqueville’s tradeoffs are incommensurable—they are tragic in the sense that we cannot have more of both.
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Kavanaugh’s Way: A Response to Greg Weiner
WASHINGTON, DC - SEPTEMBER 27: Judge Brett Kavanaugh testifies to the Senate Judiciary Committee. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)Lifting the presumption of innocence leaves each of us on a knife’s edge, as...
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Beauty and Politics
Image: Anna Subbotina/Adobe Stock Images.Beauty and politics don’t come naturally connected in our political discourse—perhaps they should be a deeper concern in our common life?
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Reading America from the Outside
Outsiders often see more about us than we do ourselves: James L. Nolan shows us what Tocqueville, Weber, Chesterton, and Qutb noticed.
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Policy Change Alone Can Never Fix Our Immigration Problems
Aerial view of Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty (iofoto/shutterstock.com).Immigration offers socio-economic challenges, but also spiritual ones.
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A Tocquevillean Christmas Fable
Still image of Natalie Wood and Edmund Gwenn in Miracle on 34th Street (1947). Image: 20th Century Fox.Americans are, as Tocqueville says, better than they say, but the doctrine lets Americans appear...
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The Murderer Comes Home
Edith de Haviland (Glenn Close) descends the stairs in "Crooked House," made from a 1949 Agatha Christie novel. (alamy.com)Our novelists, from Austen to Christie, spy hints of trouble lurking beneath...
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What Does a Mature and Reliable Liberal Sound Like Today?
(image: alamy.com)Alan Wolfe is no mere ideologue, but partisan blindness makes him unable to carry through on the urgent task he has undertaken.
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College Admissions and America’s Second-Rate Aristocracy
Image: At Stock Productions / Shutterstock.comThe desperate fear that motivated parents' behavior extends far wider than these elites—it offers a glimpse of the dark side of America’s democratic soul.
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Counterculturalism Rightly Understood
Opposing radical individualism, Lawler and Reinsch look to the unwritten constitution as the key to understanding how to form citizens in a democratic age.
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What Distinguishes America?
vladimir wrangel (shutterstock.com)Orestes Brownson’s view is that America is the prudent compromise between two idealistic extremes.
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Defending Religion as a Public Good
Detail image of the Bladensburg Memorial Cross in Bladensburg, Maryland (Glynnis Jones / Shutterstock.com).A responsible political leader might act to promote religion for secular reasons, on the...
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