In my former life as a professor, and in my current non-professional life, I’ve advocated for a school of thought called “localism.”

Much of our lives become embroiled in and defined by our obsessions with things “fleeting and failing,” but we can never silence the still, small voice within us that tells us to seek for truth and meaning beyond the ephemera.

I’ve long claimed that, in a republican system of government, if presidential elections become the system’s central feature then that system is already in deep trouble.

In an earlier essay, we talked about the problem of whether we can trust our senses.

We’ve been subjected a great deal to the claim that we live in unprecedented times, but I suspect that only our liberal use of the term counts as unprecedented.

My mother had a democratic head and an aristocratic heart.

One of the things we’ve been very eager to pursue are partnerships with other publicly-minded organizations, particularly those who are addressing our democratic deficits.

In his debate with Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln asserted, "With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed."

One of my standard tropes in my teaching days was to caution students against succumbing to “the tyranny of the present.”

Last week I offered up Part 1 of this two-part response to David Brooks’ Atlantic essay “How America Got Mean.”

In recent years, we’ve heard a lot of talk about assaults on “our democracy” and about protecting “our democracy,” usually from people we might call “elites” in government and the news media.

Last week I mentioned that I would be commenting upon a recent David Brooks’ essay. 

Thanksgiving, now past, and Christmas and New Year’s, now near at hand, bring with them the prospects of family gatherings.

On this day of thanksgiving, it seems worth our time to reflect on the virtue of gratitude.

I recently asked a friend in our student life division if he had seen a picture showing three persons of differing heights standing behind a fence trying to watch a baseball game.

The fundamental thing about any technology is that it alters our relationship to the world.

Americans like to think they have solved the problem of the relationship between political life and religious life.

The problem of “Dirty Hands” becomes especially acute in the Christian era.

Last week we introduced readers to the political concept of “dirty hands,” by which we mean the use of ethically dubious means to achieve morally desirable ends.

In a democratic polity such as ours we have strange and frequently paradoxical expectations of our leaders.