How Germans made America
Donald Trump was made for America 250. The looks, the flair, the beguiling mix of arrogance and fun — the 47th president is his country in flabby flesh and bone.…
America’s other constitution
We may now speak of an ancient America. You’ll forgive me such bold pronouncements, for there isn’t the time to waste trapped in tired registers of speech, and I have…
It’s time to dump the Founding Fathers
The ink spilled on the much-ballyhooed “Founding Fathers” could fill Boston Harbour. There’s Thomas Jefferson, the sphinx-like figure of American politics, a man who can be read as the origin…
American democracy was born in feudal Europe
If there is a foundational dogma to America’s civic religion, it is that the United States is an exceptional country. The reason we emerged as the world’s first modern democracy,…
How America went awry
Over recent years, few writers have been quoted as incessantly as Hannah Arendt. Or rather misquoted — for though Donald Trump’s first presidential win catapulted Arendt’s 1951 book on totalitarianism…
How the Constitution failed America
Next month, Americans mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence from the British Empire. Although the present US Constitution was written in 1787, ratified in 1788, and first…
Size mattered for the Founding Fathers
In the summer of 1776, just a few weeks after the Thirteen Colonies had declared their independence, George Washington was in New York, preparing for the first and biggest fight…
How America lost the art of association
“In democratic countries the science of association is the mother science; the progress of all the others depends on the progress of that one,” wrote Alexis de Tocqueville after touring…
Can America ever escape race?
Ever since he attained the age of majority some four decades ago, Terence Hamilton, now 57, has voted in Mississippi’s Second Congressional District, covering 30 counties across the western part…