The coarsening of public discourse has brought attention about the need to back civility back into the culture.

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.

The framers of our Constitution worried most about the power of the legislature, and for that reason directed much of their attention to checks upon legislative power.

Executive privilege is the constitutional principle that permits the president and high-level executive branch officers to withhold information from Congress, the courts, and ultimately the public.

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.

There is much debate about whether America had a “Christian Founding.” Like many disagreements, the position one takes often depends on the assumptions one, and these assumptions need defending.

Here we go again. The presidential primaries are upon us.

Last week I opined that Washington’s “Farewell Address” to the nation was the best of its genre.

It would not be difficult to make the case that Gerald Ford was the greatest athlete ever to serve as President of the United States.

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.

In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle defines virtue as the mean between the extremes. While few people confuse courage with its lack (cowardice), there are many who might confuse it with its excess (bravado or cockiness).

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.

Without question, the work of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil rights movement has impacted my entire life.

Donald Trump’s win in the Iowa caucus spurred a new round of commentary that Trump’s persistent and, to his critics, toxic presence in American politics portends a violence that could lead America into its next civil war.

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.”

Jean de Crèvecœur was a French expatriate who settled in New York in 1759 after having fought in the French and Indian Wars.