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Temptations of Tyranny
Rod Dreher’s conflicted support for President Trump illustrates a broader crisis among intellectual conservatives who fear the "soft totalitarianism" of liberal institutions yet embrace the hard authoritarianism of executive overreach. Drawing on Hannah Arendt’s political thought, the essay contends that true freedom is preserved not through charismatic leaders but through the multiplication and decentralization of citizen power. Revitalizing democracy, it argues, requires stubborn, local acts of collective governance rather than the dangerous temptation to concentrate authority in a single figure.04-27-2025
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The Dictatorial Workplace
Zephyr Teachout paints a dystopian picture of workers monitored, oppressed, and harmed by constant tracking, monitoring, and supervision. At the end of this drive to watch workers is, in the end, the desire to fully understand workers that they can be manipulated and exploited.08-06-2022
Tracy Strong
Roger BerkowitzTracy Burr Strong died on May 11th. Tracy was one of the greatest contemporary political theorists with an extraordinary range. His first book, Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of Transfiguration (1975) is still read widely as both a contribution to Nietzsche studies and to political thinking more broadly. His latest book, Learning One’s Native Tongue, argues that the essence of American citizenship is not simply a matter of who can vote or whom has rights.
06-05-2022
The Sanctimonious Hypocrites
Roger BerkowitzI wrote about the free-speech case against Princeton Professor Joshua Katz two weeks ago. Now Katz has been fired from his tenure-track position not for his criticisms of colleagues, but for not cooperating with an investigation into a consensual relationship he had with a student nearly two decades ago. Katz’s wife Solveig Lucia Gold writes about her husband and how she has lost all faith in Princeton and Universities.
05-29-2022
The Fountain of Eternal Youth
Roger BerkowitzWilliam Deresiewicz argues that the “young progressive elite” has traded independence and critical thinking for an immaturity that submits to authorities. The result, he argues, is a stunted development for many of the best and brightest young people in the country.
05-29-2022
The Ukrainian Twitter Wars in Africa
Roger BerkowitzThere is a certain overconfidence in the circles I frequent that the world is against Russia and for Ukraine and Nato. But more than half the world is tacitly or explicitly supporting Russia in its war with Ukraine. The Economist looks at the Russian propaganda campaign aimed at non-western countries in Africa and Asia.
05-22-2022
Academic Freedom vs. Free Speech
Roger BerkowitzWendy Brown is interviewed by David Marchese about the politics of speech codes, wokeness, and academic freedom on college campuses.
05-15-2022
Airfare vs. Warfare
Roger BerkowitzAs the world comes to the realization that old-fashioned ground warfare may be in our present and our future, the New York Times’ Azmat Khan has written a deeply researched account of the U.S. air war in Afghanistan and Iraq.
05-15-2022
The Faculty Against the Administrators
Roger BerkowitzThere is no dictatorship in the United States threatening university administrators and faculty with prison for violating national security laws. And yet Sergiu Klainerman argues that too many administrators are acting as if there were. According to Klainerman, even those administrators who profess to support freedom of expression and academic freedom are so cowed by DEI administrators that they refuse to publicly stand up for the academic freedom of their professors.
05-08-2022