A Hungarian Tocqueville

by Peter J. Leithart

János Zoltán Csák's status as a foreign observer allows him to speak the truth in love about the United States. Continue Reading »

24 May 2024

Rediscovering Our Everyday Freedom

by Jonathan Leaf

Philip Howard’s new book explains why government functions so poorly and bureaucracy and litigiousness have become ubiquitous aspects of American life. Continue Reading »

21 Mar 2024

School Choice Promotes National Unity

by R. R. Reno

We have a great deal in common as Americans. But what we share can be obscured by the rage and fury of our partisan battles. It is for this reason that school choice will paradoxically promote unity in our country.  Continue Reading »

26 Jan 2023

We Renounce the Old World

by Charles J. Chaput

James Nolan's What they Saw in America considers four foreigners' perspectives on the United States: Tocqueville, Max Weber, Chesterton, and Sayyid Qutb. Continue Reading »

27 Mar 2018

The Tool of Selective Nostalgia

by Peter Lawler

In defense of a rigorously selective form of nostalgia. Continue Reading »

23 Oct 2014

Carl’s Rock Songbook #67: How to Think about Disco

by Carl Scott

Have any of you seen the Eric Rohmer film 4 Aventures de Reinette et Mirabelle? It’s sort of a retelling of the “Country Mouse, City Mouse” story. Two young women, one from the country, one from the city, are thrown together and become friends. They represent a certain sophistication . . . . Continue Reading »

15 Oct 2012

Stefan Kopplekamm’s Photos Suggest Another Possibility

by Carl Scott

Another of Tocqueville’s possibilities, that is, that sometimes it’s the “laws” that shape the “mores.” For never did laws/regime/ideology degrade mores more than in the communist countries. Kopplekamm’s stunning slide show of East Berlin buildings . . . . Continue Reading »

29 May 2012

Mores Matter More

by Carl Scott

Ampontan has some nice juxtapositions, jumping off Victor Davis Hanson among others, highlighting the culture-and-mores-rooted FACT that Greece, Southern Italy, Detroit, and urban Britain are simply more difficult and troublesome places to live than Germany, Northern Italy, Switzerland, and of . . . . Continue Reading »

29 May 2012

Elizabeth Warren: the Low-Down Democratic Goodness of Public Shaming

by Carl Scott

Let’s start off soberly, even on a note of august regret. One of the things Thomas Jefferson and John Adams agreed upon was that the primary point of republican popular suffrage was to elect a natural aristocracy . The same hope and intention gets expressed, albeit in a more guardedly . . . . Continue Reading »

19 May 2012

Carl’s Rock Songbook #39: What Martha Bayles Said

by Carl Scott

Martha Bayles is the author of the best book on pop music I know, Hole in Our Soul: The Loss of Beauty and Meaning in American Popular Music . For its final chapter, she borrows the title of a William Bell song, You Don’t Miss Your Water ‘til the Well Runs Dry , so as to refer to the . . . . Continue Reading »

14 Feb 2012