Sublime

The Civil Rights Act of 1875 was the high point—and the end point—of the passage of such laws, however. In that very year, a series of rulings by the United States Supreme Court—very narrow rulings, in tune with the growing laissez-faire attitude of the time and in tune also with the popular feeling that perhaps the government had gone far enough i

The wealthy often claim special skills, hard work, and the personal sacrifice they themselves or their parents or forefathers have made as justifications for the wealth they hold today. These factors may well have contributed to their fortunes. Yet, without legal coding, most of these fortunes would have been short-lived. Accumulating wealth over l

David Freedman, “Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science,” Atlantic, October 4, 2010, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science/308269/.

Nearly half of colonial New Englanders’ wealth would come from sugar grown by West Indian slaves.

At the close of the twentieth century it appeared that the great ideological battles between fascism, communism, and liberalism had resulted in the overwhelming victory of liberalism. Democratic politics, human rights, and free-market capitalism seemed destined to conquer the entire world. But as usual, history took an unexpected turn, and after fa

Frank Donoghue, the author of The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities, writes that liberal arts education has been systemically dismantled for decades. Any form of learning not strictly vocational has at best been marginalized and in many schools abolished. Students are steered away from asking the broad, distur