Sublime

in the advanced political cultures of the Enlightenment tradition the creation of knowledge can and should be paramount, and the idea that representative government depends on proportionate representation in the legislature is unequivocally a mistake.

The gulf between Kennedy and party liberals came partly from an unbridgeable difference in perspective. New Deal–Fair Deal Democrats thought in terms of traditional welfare state concerns—economic security, social programs, racial equality. But as Jack told Harris Wofford, “The key thing for the country is a new foreign policy that will break out o

I’ve met Ayn Rand fanatics all over—among Silicon Valley venture capitalists, at the office of the Tampa Bay Tea Party, even on a road paving crew. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (who read Atlas Shrugged in high school) brought her pitiless philosophy of egoism to policymaking on Capitol Hill. Libertarianism speaks to the American myth of the self-

During the fifties, this wing had found its principal spokesman in Stevenson, with his elegant prose, his self-deprecating wit. It felt that the United States must take more initiatives to end the arms race, that if America did not recognize Red China it should at least begin to move toward that goal, that nationalism was the new and most potent fo

In this perspective, not only will the market replace government ends, it will also replace the government means of democracy. As Peter Thiel flatly put it, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”5

But even for a strong country an alliance involves risks and costs. It can find itself pushed into or worse yet trapped in situations not of its own choosing by the actions of an alliance member. It can also find itself constrained on occasion by what allies are not prepared to support or do. And even if such situations do not arise, alliances can