A Nation Jolted by Terrorism Redefines Its Sense of Self

The End of Sweden’s “Naïve Slumber” Lays Bare Its Competing Truths

The woman in the audience is among those who will stay for a while to ask a question. I have just been giving a lecture at the Foreign Policy Association of Sweden’s Uppsala University. The topic is the country’s migration. That is almost the only thing we’ve talked about since autumn of 2015, when 10,000 asylum seekers arrived every week, raising questions about how our migration policy is shaped and how we should hope to cope with the integration of the many newly arrived.

The woman tells me that she is …

How California’s Open Meetings Law Became a Gag Rule

Local Government Has Changed So Much That the Historic Brown Act Is Silencing Us, Not Protecting Us

The Ralph M. Brown Act, first approved in 1953, is celebrated for its supposed guarantees that we citizens have a voice in the decisions of all our local governments.

But today, …

No One Wants to Wear the “Fascist” Label, Even If It Fits

Why Hitler's Brownshirts and Mussolini's Blackshirts Rile up Today's Politics

Western democracy may be facing its biggest challenge since 1945. It’s easy to find parallels between Donald Trump, the UK Independence Party (UKIP), the French National Front, the Alternativ für …

When Paranoid Rhetoric and Falsehoods Prevail, Public Trust Crumbles

A Government That Undercuts Peoples’ Faith May Undermine Its Own Legitimacy

“Nothing is more surprising,” wrote David Hume in his 1758 First Principles of Government, than “the easiness with which the many are governed by the few.”

What explains this surprising …

The Dark Void at the Heart of Globalization

Are the Politics of Nihilism a Backlash Against the Enlightenment?

When I was a gloomy 16-year-old grasping to find some meaning in the world, my father gave me a tattered copy of social philosopher Michael Novak’s The Experience of Nothingness. …

A Belligerent President, Accusations of Treason, and a Stolen Supreme Court Seat

How Thomas Jefferson's Feud with Aaron Burr Defined What It Means to Betray America

What does treason mean in America?

One answer lies in our nation’s founding document. Treason is the only crime defined in the U.S. Constitution, which states: “Treason against the United States …