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Time to Amend the Constitution

by Don Fraser

Significant changes are needed to the Constitution in order to preserve any semblance of democratic government. 

For America, Let's Send the Adults Back to School

by David Chamberlain

The lyceum movement of the 1800s offers a model to reestablish desperately needed civic education and communal interaction across the lines that divide Americans. 

The Thirty Meter Telescope Project Exemplifies Scientific Progress and Indigenous Dispossession

by Marissa Gavin

The narrative of progress inspired by a new astronomy project clashes with the ongoing reality of indigenous dispossession in the selection of Mauna Kea, sacred to native Hawaiians, as the telescope's site. 

The Republicans' Holocaust Problem

by Steve Hochstadt

"New Republican laws and their emboldened approach to white supremacy will inevitably lead to an attack on any Holocaust teaching which goes beyond the discussion of prejudice to analyze the power of embedded racism and Christian white supremacy."

History Offers Warning that Some Crises of Civic Virtue are Overblown

by Bruce Dearstyne

The American Bar Association's Committee on American Citizenship warned in 1922 of a decline in civic awareness that threatened the very survival of the republic. A century later, it offers a lesson that sometimes warnings of democratic peril are self-serving. 

The Second Floundering

by Brook Thomas

Although scholars have identified the Reconstruction Amendments as a redemption of the flaws of the original Constitution, it's important to understand, as critics did at the time, that the 14th and 15th Amendments left many gaps in the American democracy. 

Cassandra Calls from the Age of Metternich

by Niels Eichhorn

The European reaction against the French revolution and the Napoleonic wars shows the insecurity of liberty. 

The Dictatorship of the Supreme Court

by Christine Adams

Six judges, who are impervious to public opinion and majority rule are exercising arbitrary control over American society, jeopardizing the very legitimacy of the government. 

Organized Defiance May Be the Only Answer to an Undemocratic Court

by Alan J. Singer

If Democrats in the legislative branch won't use their majorities to define the scope of judicial power to stop rulings that defy the will of the public, the public must organize to defy the rulings of the courts. 

Where Will America Be by 2030?

by Ed Simon

The right's agenda is for a white, Christian, patriarchal nationalism that simply can't be achieved by majority rule. That's what the Supreme Court and 400,000,000 privately owned guns are for.

What Americans Might Learn About Political Collapse from the Classical Greeks and Romans

by Daniel Noah Moses

The right traces political turmoil in the US to the supposed abandonment of the classical canon. But reading those works might not teach the lessons they want about hierarchy, authority, and political collapse. 

Dark Skies Over SCOTUS

by James D. Zirin

If the Supreme Court justices don't want to be perceived as partisan hacks, the latest rulings aren't helping their cause. 

The Edmund Burke Foundation Betrays its Namesake and Threatens Liberty with "National Conservatism"

by Thomas Lecaque and J.L. Tomlin

The Edmund Burke Foundation has claimed the mantle of the foundational conservative in its recent manifesto, but what the document articulates is a blueprint for an authoritarian, theocratic society that owes more to European fascism.

50 Years Ago, a SCOTUS Decision Placed a Moratorium on Executions. It's Time to Revive it, Permanently

by Rick Halperin

Fifty years ago this week, the Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty violated the Constitution, opening a de facto moratorium as states legislated new capital punishment statutes. It's time to make this brief victory for human rights permanent. 

We Are All Americans Here: The Crisis of Civic Empathy and our Besieged Democracy

by Chris J. Magoc

Many Americans are living in a state of grief at the rise of a movement led by an authoritarian sociopath. The answer is to rediscover through action a sense of shared humanity. 

What Prohibition History Tells Us about Returning Abortion to the States

by Richard F. Hamm

Federal control of interstate commerce and the mail mean that medical abortifacents will be difficult for state-level antiabortion politicians to keep out of their borders. There's no doubt that they will seek to pass federal laws leading to a national abortion ban. 

Will Artificial Intelligence be the Agent of Capitalism's (and Humanity's) Creative Destruction?

by Jim Castagnera

Between science fiction and the political economy of the present, the author wonders if artificial intelligence will constitute humanity's successor species. 

"Oh, We Knowed What Was Goin’ On": The Myths (and Lies) of Juneteenth

by Clyde W. Ford

After the myths of Juneteenth are stripped away, the day symbolizes the incompleteness of the promise of emancipation. 

Florida's Divisive Concepts Bill Mistakes What Historians Do, with Dire Implications

by Jessica L. Adler

The legislation would make it difficult – and even legally risky – for professors to perform the kinds of source-driven teaching that underlies the pedagogical goals of the discipline. 

"Our Best Memorial to the Dead Would be Our Service to the Living"

by Allison S. Finkelstein

An overlooked cohort of American women who served in the first world war worked to establish service, instead of statuary, as a mode of memorialization. Their example offers a path out of the heated politics of commemoration.