Political thinking in the modern democratic era easily lends itself to the reliance on simplifying labels – in other words, ideologies.

Last year I decided to fix our deck. It’s big, about 600 square feet, nine feet off the ground, and it was falling apart. Joists were rotting, and the whole thing was resting on one beam, when there should’ve been three. My foot went through the floor a couple of times.

In this essay, one of our student authors examines how Roman ideals of civic duty and freedom influenced the Federalist and Anti-Federalist debates, revealing their lasting impact on America's founding and modern democracy.

Biographer Ron Chernow explains, “Mark Twain has long been venerated as an emblem of Americana.” In this fascinating biography, Chernow explains why. Though the book runs to 1200 pp, it never becomes tedious; on the contrary, it is an enthralling read.

Until recently, anyone who believed there was anything fishy about the U.S. organ donation system was labeled a conspiracy theorist. Yet now the old adage: “What’s the difference between conspiracy and truth? About six months,” rings true again, as so-called conspiracy theorists have been proven right by none other than the federal Health and Resources Services Administration (HRSA) itself.

“War made the state,” said the political scientist Charles Tilly, “and the state made war.” Tilly was talking about actual states, but the same could be said about metaphorical states: states of mind, or perhaps of the soul.

Charles Rangel and Gerald Ford were veterans of the Korean War and World War II, respectively. When Rangel was elected to Congress in 1971, history brought him together with then-Michigan Rep. Jerry Ford, first elected to Congress in 1948.

The decline in fertility throughout the developed world is a widely noted problem: both in the U.S. and most of the developed world, the rate of reproduction is well short of what would be required to sustain our population at existing levels.

In the past, I used to grab my morning tea and then check the news. Now, I wake up and dread the morning’s political news.

In an era of deep political polarization, a new study indicates that many members of Congress may be out of step not just with the opposition party, but with their own voters as well.

As a lifelong student of political philosophy and political science, rather than a practitioner of law, I tend to approach such ideas by turning to the great minds who discovered and articulated them over the centuries.

I’ve heard it said that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. I’ve also heard that people these days are pretty stressed out, and I have to wonder if that’s because we’re all being so damned vigilant.