Essays
Judgment / September 8, 2026
Let's begin with the sentence most civics classes get wrong: ancient Athens was a democracy. The Roman Republic was not. The difference between them is not...
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Most Americans hear the phrase "electoral autocracy" and picture a faraway capital. They imagine a strongman in a tailored suit standing beside a row of...
Every time a federal funding lapse looms, the same question dominates the coverage: Who wins the blame game? That is exactly the wrong question. A...
Ask a well-read American what Montesquieu contributed to political thought and you will almost certainly hear the phrase separation of powers. That answer...
Most arguments for representative government start with an apology. The usual line is that we cannot all fit in the town square, so we send someone else to...
Every few years, Washington turns the debt ceiling into a ritual crisis. Treasury secretaries warn that default is days away. Presidents demand a clean...
Most Americans have never read this sentence. The Supreme Court has spent more than a century pretending it does not exist. It is the kind of sentence that...
Most Americans picture electoral manipulation as a box of fake ballots or a hacker in a server room. Those threats exist and should be prosecuted. But the...
There is no voting system that will make men angels. But if you want to understand why self-described reformers work so hard to dismantle...
There are plenty of bad arguments for packing the Supreme Court, but the most revealing one is also the worst: the people pushing it no longer believe they...