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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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On the Banality of Not Bearing Witness
By Samuel R. GallowayOn May 5, 2020, anonymously leaked video brought the lynching of Ahmaud Arbery in Glynn County, Georgia into the light of the public realm. It is devastating footage and I was overwhelmed when I truly comprehended what I was witnessing. As I did, I cried out of grief, shame, and anger. I looked to my husband and confessed, “I did not want to see this.” But, the fact is I did not see much, even if what I had witnessed was just enough to understand...
05-22-2020
Hold on To the Common World
Roger BerkowitzAs part of his attempt to divert attention from his failures to address the Corona virus pandemic, President Trump has now fired four Inspectors General in the past six weeks. These firings are important. They represent the elimination and intimidation of those charged with overseeing the representatives elected to power in our democracy. The inspectors general are those who can expose the lies and corruption that foment cynicism that threatens the common world.
05-20-2020
What Would Have Been If He Had Spoke
Roger BerkowitzRolf Hochhuth died last week. Hochhuth was the author of The Deputy, A Christian Tragedy that premiered on the Freie Volksbühne stage in West Berlin in February 1963, making the author world-famous. The play is a documentary inquiry into the decision by Pope Pius XII to remain silent regarding the Holocaust, about which he knew.
05-20-2020
What We Are Reading:
The Outrage Mob
Roger BerkowitzPamela Paresky, Jonathan Haidt, Nadine Strossen, and Steven Pinker write about the outrage mob that has forced institutions like the New York Times to run scared and censor the newspaper in response to public pressure.
05-20-2020
The Gift of Community
Roger BerkowitzPhilanthropy increasingly has a bad name in some circles these days. And there are real worries about the retreat of government being replaced by wealthy donors who then have an outsized impact on our public world. But it is also important to recall Aristotle’s insight that a political community depends upon virtues, including what he calls the virtue of liberality. It is meaningful, Aristotle writes, when wealthy citizens build shrines to the graces in public places...
05-20-2020
Get Back to Laboring
Roger BerkowitzGovernments and businesses are telling people to get back to work. Lyndsey Stonebridge notes that what what they really are saying is to get back to the business of laboring. The distinction between work and labor is central to Hannah Arendt’s thinking about the human condition.
05-16-2020
Amor Mundi Podcast, Episode 1: Martin Gurri
The Hannah Arendt Center presents the Amor Mundi Podcast. This episode, Roger Berkowitz talks with Martin Gurri, author of The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium.05-15-2020
Federalism
Roger BerkowitzAs the President vacillates between claiming absolute powers and empowering the states, there is a renewed interest in the American principle of federalism. The appeal to the principle of federalism and the multiplication of powers throughout the United States Constitutional system is precisely the kind of thinking Hannah Arendt celebrated as the true innovation of the United States Constitution.
05-14-2020
Communities of Trust
Roger BerkowitzIn a Senate hearing this week, Senator Rand Paul called for humility and warned that Dr. Anthony Fauci was not the “end all” in predicting the course of the Coronavirus. In response, Dr. Fauci reminded Senator Paul—who is also a doctor—that he had never made himself to be an “end all.” “I am a scientist, a physician, and a public health official. I give advice according to the best scientific evidence...
05-14-2020