John Locke

We see what we want to see from philosophers such as Locke not because he wrote for our time (or “all time”) but because we imagine he did.

John Locke took part in administering the slave-owning colonies. Does that make him, and liberalism itself, hypocritical?

The 250th anniversary of "the shot heard round the world" is a reminder of the rights the Patriots fought for.

For centuries, theorists of liberal governance have worried about how emergencies can unfetter executive power. Trump has given those fears new urgency.

Liberalism’s relationship to equality has, his­torically, been far from a warm embrace.

A new book systematically defends the American Founding against those who believe it was destined to end in nihilism.

When the going gets tough, the tough start something better.

How the Enlightenment created modern race thinking, and why we should confront it.

Ultimately, only a civic culture alert to and upset by abuses of power can safeguard sound republican government.

We need more than genealogies to know who we are, and who we ought to become.

The United States fares badly on the World Happiness Report. Who cares?

High ideals have always gone together with economic self-interest in the history of the United States.

New books examine the place of work in our lives—and how people throughout history have tried to change it.

On Cormac McCarthy.

What role does age play in determining the status of equals?

From Jefferson's viewpoint, Native peoples could claim a title to their homelands, but they did not own that land as private property.

Government, wrote Alexander Hamilton, should substitute “the mild influence” of the law for “the violent and sanguinary agency of the sword.”

A conversation about the Cold War’s profound and negative influence on the liberal worldview.

After the English Revolution—and an island’s experiment with republicanism—a genuine restoration was never in the cards.

How Americans lost faith in the possibility of self-government.