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to participate in the great decisions of government. There was, Lippmann brooded, no “intrinsic moral and intellectual virtue to majority rule.” Lippmann’s disenchantment with democracy anticipated the mood of today’s elites. From the top, the public, and the swings of public opinion, appeared irrational and uninformed. The human material out of wh

Martin Gurri • Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium

The Democratic Party of George McGovern was, in this narrative, the party of “acid, amnesty and abortion,” the party of chaos, disruption and overreach. Out of touch with the vast American middle, it had cast its lot with cultural elites and antiwar militants. This Democratic Party, said the Nixon campaign, could not relate to the tens of millions ... See more

Jamelle Bouie • Opinion | The Real Reason Trump and Vance Hate Being Called ‘Weird’

Not long ago, America was more than the sum of its parts. Now, it is less. Around World War II, we were proud as a people but modest as individuals. Fewer than two people in ten said yes when asked, Are you a very important person? Today, more than six in ten say yes. Where we once thought ourselves collectively strong, we now regard ourselves as i... See more

William Strauss • The Fourth Turning

Reagan was trying to make a point, that words are hollow, but deeds and values are deep.

Simon Sinek • Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action

The author never met anybody who would trade our social order for theirs, who wants to go back to that old Princeton world. And yet ... and yet there are disturbing ghosts around the campus. The old order haunts this one, and whispers that maybe something was lost as well as gained when we sacrificed all for the sake of high achievement, safety, an... See more

David Brooks • The Organization Kid

A writer could blast out her opinions, but writers are at their best not when they tell people what to think but when they provide a context within which others can think.

David Brooks • How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen

Reagan cared more about the functions of self-government than his most ideological supporters. He knew how to persuade and when to compromise. But after he was gone, and the Soviet Union not long after him, Free America lost the narrative thread. Without Reagan’s smile and the Cold War’s clarity, its vision grew darker and more extreme. Its spirit

George Packer • Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal

- “If one function of a college like Swarthmore should be to create a good elite, another should be to give young people a taste for the life of the mind understood as an end in itself.”

The Point • Elite Education | The Point Magazine

Opinion: "Without leaders who, through their example and decisions, safeguard our norms and celebrate them and affirm them and reinforce them, the words on paper — the Bill of Rights, the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence — will never unite us.”"