Sublime

Edmund Burke argued that a society should be seen as a: ‘partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born’ (Burke [1790] quoted in Beinhocker 2006: 454). Burke points to the interests of unborn members of a society and how they need a powerful ‘voice’ to counter so

Senators would also be armored against the popular will by the length of their terms, the Framers decided. Frequent elections mean frequent changes in the membership of a body, and, Madison said, from a “change of men must proceed a change of opinions; and from a change of opinions, a change of measures. But a continual change even of good measures

Since I knew that many people would only read the first and last items in the document, I asked that the Contract begin and end with the two highest-priority proposals in the eyes of the voters: a balanced budget amendment and term limits.

‘What is there against Bulstrode?’ said Lydgate, emphatically. ‘I did not say there was anything against him except that. If you vote against him you will make him your enemy.’ ‘I don’t know that I need mind about that,’ said Lydgate, rather proudly; ‘but he seems to have good ideas about hospitals, and he spends large sums on useful public objects

Senator Bob Dole, who’d hoped to snatch the presidential election from Bill Clinton, saw an irresistible wedge issue. He got Georgia Republican Bob Barr (thrice married) to introduce a “Defense of Marriage Act” in the US House. Barr declaimed it like a fire-and-brimstone sermon: “The very foundations of our society are in danger of being burned. Th

For the next two decades, Sam Rayburn held power in Washington. Presidents came and went—Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy—but whoever was President, Sam Rayburn was Speaker; he held the post he had dreamed of as a boy for almost seventeen of the twenty-one years after 1940, more years than any other man in American history.