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democracy 84

Away From Politics with Kathleen Raine (Then Back Again)

Are we capable of that on a scale that will regenerate our political life? Perhaps not, at least for now, but we can take heart from the knowledge that, over…
December 6, 2024

Ode to Gettysburg at 161

To prove the American proposition, we must dedicate our lives to its truth with our deeds every day, and maybe someday with our lives themselves.
November 19, 2024

Straw Men and the Possibility of Community in Modernity

Between these extremes, however, is free choice within reasonable limits, which I believe makes the value of community and its deliberative fruits still possible, even within the reality of the…

Voting for a President Won’t Save the Republic

A democracy is not kept by filling in a ballot bubble once every four years. It’s kept by responsibly and virtuously exercising our freedoms in our homes, communities, and institutions…
Jeffrey Bilbro
October 30, 2024

Real Communities and Democratic Theory

If we don’t experience full, unqualified “concrete, historical community,” then we won’t experience full, unqualified “genuine deliberation.”
September 27, 2024

The New Alignment

Contemplating this turn of events in our politics reminds me that we human beings have a strong desire for tidy coherence. Sometimes this desire can be a kind of sickness.
September 19, 2024

A Rural White American’s Reflection of White Rural Rage: Resentment is Toxic

Despite Trump’s own divisive rhetoric, he makes rural Americans feel heard in ways neither majority party has in decades. Any politician or scholar who actually wants to address the root…
September 3, 2024

Politics Beyond Thunderdome: Yuval Levin’s American Covenant

We cannot give into the temptation of thinking that our times are so different that basic civility must be cast aside. Once we have done that, we are lost.

Democracy Against Localism

That’s the great cultural task now: to relearn this old language, to keep it from dying out, to nurture it and refine and expand it, to develop new idioms and…

Beyond the Mechanism: An Economist Grapples with Statesmanship

When we refuse to engage our fellow citizens, we are also taking a public position. There is such a thing as non-partisan economics. But there is no such thing as…

From the Editor

There is something Augustinian in Lukacs’ view of the past—that in a real sense, or at least in a manner of speaking, it exists only in the present, for it…
Jason Peters
April 26, 2024

The Virtues of Sheep

A chief virtue of sheep is, indeed, that they are content with remarkably little, and—this is key—they are rooted and aware citizens of their locale.

Philadelphia: The City of Freedom

As Americans, we must remember that place matters, and our founding principles are best understood when we look at how they were made real in the city of brotherly love.
February 15, 2024

Rights and Duties

Our duty is to live lives that conform to what is good, true, and beautiful. Natural rights in general, and the rights enshrined in the Constitution in particular, are means…
February 7, 2024

Democracies Need Shared Literature

Before we totally condemn the Athenians as selfish, entertainment-addicted bad citizens—which, to be fair, they sometimes (or often?) were, just like us—it is worth considering what such shared democratic spaces…
October 26, 2023

On Latimer, Localism, Liberalism, and Democracy

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Wichita, KS. Trevor Latimer’s Small Isn’t Beautiful: The Case Against Localism deeply engaged me, but not in a positive way, at least not initially. As…

After the Second Cheer: A Review of Two Cheers for Politics

Purdy has a palpable affection for what he calls “the preservative work of being together.” Beginning again from that affection might allow Purdy and his readers to find a fuller…
February 10, 2023

Democracy’s Despotic Drift

A court decision that returns to the people the power to decide the pressing questions of the day could be considered fatal to democracy only in an age as Orwellian…
November 1, 2022

What Is Your Vote?

I’m not asking what candidate you support. What I am asking you to consider is what does your vote constitute? This question was spurred by Jeff Bilbro’s thought-provoking essay here…

Vermont Papers Redux

All in all, mark The Vermont Papers down as a brave if idealistic attempt to chart the beginning of a campaign to preserve and refresh liberty, community and democracy in…

Democracy Dies in Delegation

For our elites, democratic values and grand political projects go hand in hand.  Earlier this year, Mark Zuckerberg discussed the importance of democracy in adjudicating social tradeoffs.  Zuckerberg has also recently called…
August 1, 2019

When In Gotham . . .

“How does one critique globalism without succumbing to would-be nationalist despots like Bolsonaro or Trump?” This was the earnest and sensible question a friend put to me by email the…
December 3, 2018

What Kind of Democracy Do Localists Want?

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Last week the United States went through another one of our regular, mostly ritualized exercises in mass democracy. What did (or should) localists think of…
November 11, 2018