Sublime

Tocqueville

His strategy of humility was composed of four elements: accepting the consequences of defeat; regaining the confidence of the victors; building a democratic society; and creating a European federation that would transcend the historic divisions of Europe.

These conditions, largely the result of decades of anti-government ideology, turn equality into a lie, and the lie deranges everyone. The way to begin reversing the deterioration is to show the American people that government can make their lives better. We’ve been ravaged by a short emergency—the pandemic and the depression-like conditions that it

If Perkins, the Progressive turned New Dealer, spent her life addressing problems left behind by Greeley’s Civil War generation—corporate power, exploited labor, political corruption, poverty—Rustin spent his battling injustices that the New Deal generation didn’t address: racism, segregation, and the threat of militarism to world peace. No one in

More alarming for me still were Obama’s attitudes toward America. Vainly, I scoured Dreams from My Father for some expression of reverence, even respect, for the country its author would someday lead.

modern-day eugenics enrolls each of us in its blood-soaked imagination—asking us to shoulder social problems, inviting us to purchase an illusion of safety, making any demand for robust public investment in the goods, services, and infrastructure required for everyone to live well appear unimaginable.

if the diagnosis is that Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is “another Hitler,” war might be the logical implication. However, if he is “another Moammar Gadhafi,” then strong pressure coupled with behind-the-scenes negotiation might be the chosen guiding policy.