Theodore Roosevelt may have called him a “filthy little atheist,” but Tom Paine’s pamphlet “Common Sense” got right to the heart of the American world view.  Common sense is more than a political slogan in the United States; a belief in common sense is basic to democracy as we think of it here in this [...]

After a rough week of paper grading, family visits and writing capsule reviews for Foreign Affairs, I’m getting back to an ambitious blogging schedule.  I’m working on a post about war with Iran that should be up by morning, planning a look at the state of the climate change movement following Al Gore’s typically unreflective [...]

Recently, on a trip to Washington, D.C., I stopped by the offices of The American Interest and sat down to discuss the Tea Party movement in the context of historical American populism, something I wrote about in my recent post, “Do Soldiers Drink Tea?“. Here it is:
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
(You can also [...]

The modern Democratic Party was formed out of four previously antagonistic elements in American society: urban working class and immigrant whites, Southern whites, African-Americans and upper middle class progressive reformers.  It began to take shape when Woodrow Wilson brought progressives into the mainstream of the Democratic Party; Franklin Roosevelt put all the pieces together when [...]

The Gallup organization has come out with yet another poll showing that Americans by an overwhelming percentage sympathize with the Israelis rather than the Palestinians.  This time, the pro-Israel sentiment is at a near record level: 63 percent of those asked said their sympathies lie more with Israel, 23 percent said both or neither, and [...]

A report from the Pew Research Center out this morning isn’t getting huge play in the press, but it offers a much bigger clue to the shape of our future than anything you will read on the front page of today’s New York Times.
The report is on public attitudes toward unions, and it finds that [...]

President Jimmy Carter, and his National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, have both taken issue with my recent article in Foreign Policy about Obama’s Jeffersonian and Wilsonian foreign policy impulses, entitled “The Carter Syndrome.”

As I said in my reply, my  “article was not really about Carter or his administration. It was about the current U.S. president and [...]

In a recent post I’ve written that American democracy is in more trouble than many of us think.  There are no magic solutions to these problems, but there are some things we can do that would reduce the stresses that our system is under during these extraordinary times.  So here it is: the Mead List [...]

There are two ways of looking at democracy: as a great shining ideal, or as a form of government that with all its many warts is the least bad kind that we know.
Americans would like to think about it the first way; we get in trouble, however, if we forget that the second, more prosaic [...]

Some thoughts on yesterday’s discussion of Livy, Zinn and the relationship of morality and power in human history.  The author is Jones Very, a minor but interesting nineteenth-century American poet and commentator.  The poem is taken from his collect of sonnets on Reconstruction; it was written in 1868.
Reflections on the History of Nations
When I consider [...]

…or at least order in, because I’ll be (briefly) on Special Report with Bret Baier tonight, at 6 PM EST, to discuss Obama’s foreign policy challenges, stemming from my recent article in Foreign Policy on Obama’s dueling Jeffersonian and Wilsonian impulses.

Over at The Arena this morning they are asking whether the Democrats understand the meaning of their defeat in the Massachusetts senate race.  My thoughts:
Do the Democrats ‘get it,’ you ask?
It’s a big tent party; some do and some don’t.
Somebody very cruel once said that Hubert Humphrey is a man who is twenty years ahead [...]

Today marks one of the most important dates in American history: the defeat of a British amphibious task force attempting to conquer New Orleans.  It’s one of a handful of battles that entered American folklore; the anniversary of the battle was celebrated for many years and as late as 1959 Johnny Horton’s version of “The [...]

Time Magazine’s Joe Klein has joined Matthew Yglesias and Rush Limbaugh in raising questions about my recent Foreign Policy article on Obama’s foreign policy roots.  That gives me the punditry equivalent of a perfect storm: the piece is being criticized by left, right and center.
Klein, however, raises much more sophisticated and thoughtful questions than the [...]

I see Matthew Yglesias isn’t the only person who doesn’t like my Foreign Policy magazine take on the relationship between Carter and Obama.
Rush Limbaugh rolled the tape of my appearance on the PBS Newshour (below, or here) last night and accused me, as far as I can make out, of covering up for Obama and [...]