Sublime

President Wilson’s belief that founding the League of Nations would be the best guarantee against future aggression by Germany—or anyone else—was not universally shared. In particular, France, led by Georges Clemenceau, the host of the Paris Peace Conference that was to bring a formal end to World War I, was preoccupied with ensuring that Germany w

The oldest conflict in American politics is the one between individualism and centralism. Reagan changed the terms by inverting them: the descendants of Jefferson’s yeoman farmers, with their desire for independence, became sturdy car-company executives and investment bankers yearning to breathe free of big government. The heirs of Hamilton’s arist

There are certain political goods, of which three are specially important: national independence, security, and a well-ordered constitution.

All of this suggests a future for the Middle East that is like its past, defined by violence within and across borders, little freedom or democracy, and standards of living that lag behind much of the rest of the world.

The fact that most Americans do not have passports has become a problem for American democracy.

If Perkins, the Progressive turned New Dealer, spent her life addressing problems left behind by Greeley’s Civil War generation—corporate power, exploited labor, political corruption, poverty—Rustin spent his battling injustices that the New Deal generation didn’t address: racism, segregation, and the threat of militarism to world peace. No one in

The concept of megapolitics is a powerful one. It helps illuminate some of the major mysteries of history: how governments rise and fall and what types of institutions they become; the timing and outcome of wars; patterns of economic prosperity and decline. By raising or lowering the costs and rewards of projecting power, megapolitics governs the a

The American passion for equality is thwarted by vastly and permanently unequal conditions. If Americans are to achieve the equality that has always attracted and always eluded us, government will have to be the prime mover, though not the only one.

Core to alleviating the social and economic problems in the 2030s is utilizing the population and re-creating upward mobility. The university is at the heart of both the problem and the solution. It also becomes the center of a political battle.