The Civil War started in Missouri. 40 years before anyone fired a shot, the state’s admission into the Union as a slave state drew a literal line in the dirt between states […]
The Moral Compass
The Weak State Myth
Dunbar’s Number is 150. That’s the number of people anthropologist Robin Dunbar claims we humans can maintain social relationships with based on our cognitive limits. Dunbar calculated that number from the ratio […]
Why We Served
A few weeks ago, a reader posted a question in the comments section of an essay I wrote on the topic of Confederate monuments. I’ve said just about all that I think […]
The Rule of Law
America is eiight regional cultures. At least that’s what historian Colin Woodard says in his extremely relevant book American Nations: A History of Eleven Rival Regional Cultures in North America. Each culture was […]
The Coming Storm
Between 1974 and 1991, thirty nations around the world formed democratic governments where there were not democratic governments before. It was what we now call the third wave of democratization. The first […]
The Loop
Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse Shapiro of the Bureau of Economic Research published a working paper a few years back on political media bias in American print newspapers. It was the kind of study that […]
We’re Never Going Back
When I was seventeen I took a pretty good beating from a gang of skinheads at a high school party. It was one of those parties where someone’s parents were away and […]
This Is Us
The guts of a nation, built on an unnatural divide that’s written into our source code are out in the open for all to see in Charlottesville right now. This is Us. […]
The Gift of Social Capital
Last night was “back to school night” in our neighborhood, that fun time where they cram all the parents into the classroom built for third graders to meet the teacher so she […]
Small Thoughts
Dan Pfeffer. Kevin Sullivan. Jen Psaki. Ellen Moran. Jennifer Palmeri. Anita Dunn. Nicole Wallace. Dan Bartlett. Karen Hughes. Recognize any of those names? I don’t. If you do, you’re probably a White […]
