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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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American Citizenship
“these citizens are united only by one thing, and that’s a big thing: that is, you become a citizen of the United States by consenting to its Constitution. The Constitution… is the constant remembrance of a sacred act, the act of foundation. And the foundation is to make a union out of wholly disparate ethnic minorities and religions, and still (a) have a union and (b) not assimilate or level down these differences.”—Arendt, 1973
11-04-2018
Understanding Trump
I doubt Mr. Trump has much to say about Hegel. But he may be the kind of instinctive statesman that Hegel described - a figure who has harnessed and embodied forces that he himself only half-understands. By contrast I fear that Mr. Macron, learned though he is, currently looks more like the embodiment of a dying order. —Gideon Rachman10-28-2018
A Liberal Nationalism
Hannah Arendt understood that nationalism—ethnic nationalism—could undermine the political equality at the center of the modern state. But she worried equally if not more about imperialism and globalization. Politics, Arendt argued, is about the artificial constitution of bounded peoples that live together in a common and shared world.10-21-2018
Citizenship and Civil Disobedience
In the years leading up to the Civil War, there were more than 70 violent clashes between Representatives and Senators in Congress. In her book "Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and Road to Civil War" Joanna Freeman tells a story of a raucous antebellum Congress replete with bullying, dueling, and fistfights.10-13-2018
The Academy Undressed
For the past year three scholars have been submitting papers to top journals specializing in the fields of activism and grievance studies. Several of their papers have been published, including a 3,000 word excerpt from Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, rewritten through the lens of intersectionality theory.10-07-2018
The Banality of the Elite
Know Your Lane, Imagining the Real, Disrupting Whiteness, Thank You!, Punching Down, Civil Disobedience, The Arendt Center is Hiring09-30-2018
Good and Evil
Know Your Lane, Imagining the Real, Disrupting Whiteness, Thank You!, Punching Down, Civil Disobedience, The Arendt Center is Hiring09-24-2018
The World in the Middle
Know Your Lane, Imagining the Real, Disrupting Whiteness, Thank You!, Punching Down, Civil Disobedience, The Arendt Center is Hiring09-20-2018
The Lesser Evil
Know Your Lane, Imagining the Real, Disrupting Whiteness, Thank You!, Punching Down, Civil Disobedience, The Arendt Center is Hiring09-11-2018