John Locke

The religious origins of American liberalism.

The Quaker spiritual journey, often invisible due to its silent, humble and individual nature, is illustrated in this map.

The author of new book explains the fraught and turbulent relationship between religion and government in the U.S.

Thomas Jefferson was a proponent of open migration. But who qualified as a refugee?

From Seneca Village to “urban renewal,” the government has claimed Black property—rarely with the “just compensation” promised by the Fifth Amendment.

An American conservatism which subtly or directly marginalizes the Founding is on a fast track to a conservatism at odds with America’s roots itself.

Understanding the battle over immunization—from the pre-Victorian era onward—between public health and the people may help in treating anti-vax sentiment.

People in the United States no longer agree on the nation’s purpose, values, history, or meaning. Is reconciliation possible?

James M. Smith explains the last debates between Loyalists and Patriots prior to the official outbreak of the American Revolution.

A wide-ranging conversation with the philosopher on the white supremacist roots of liberal thought, Biden’s victory, and Trumpism without Trump.

Jefferson revised the Gospels to make Jesus more reasonable, and lost the power of his story.

History shows that the text is far more complex than the legal doctrine might indicate.

The Founders didn’t believe that broad delegations of legislative power violated the Constitution, but conservative originalists keep insisting otherwise.

The artists of our time, with their ruin-porn coffee-table books, offer the world a glossy, anesthetized image of abandoned infrastructure from Chernobyl to Detroit.

From religious liberty to religious violence, it helps to get our facts straight.

The revolutionaries of 1968 didn't succeed, but the world still needs turning upside down.

The tension between nationalist ambitions and republican principles goes all the way back to our nation’s founding.

What is the greatest libertarian accomplishment of all time? The abolition of slavery.

America’s ambivalence about labor is nothing new. In the colonial era the ruling class had nothing but contempt for anything that could be justly called "work."