Civilization is always a work in progress. Every civilization is an experiment in how far people can shift themselves from the evolutionary norm of the small, kinship-integrated tribal society governed by ritual and custom to any kind of society either more complex in structure or less tribal in foundation. People assume that given intelligence…

This article presents an interview with Robert George, who holds Princeton's celebrated McCormick Chair in Jurisprudence and is the founding director of the James Madison Program. George has served on the President's Council on Bioethics and as a presidential appointee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights. He is also a member of the…

One thing history's torrent appears to be sweeping away is, ironically, the study of its most productive wellspring, Western civilization. "The Vanishing West", a report the National Association of Scholars released in May 2011, documents the extent of this vanishing. The traditional Western civilization survey requirement, commonplace only…

In terms of political liberation and constitutional democracy, Americans cannot help but think back to 1776 and the Declaration of Independence. For the English, the mind reaches back to the English Declaration of Rights of 1689, and for those with somewhat longer historical memories, to Magna Carta of 1215. But the true origin of political…

One of the reasons often advanced for the study of Western civilization is its history of scientific and technical prowess. Advances in science and technology have resulted in the many conveniences of modern life: air travel, automobiles, and smart phones, to name just a few. These are fruits of the Baconian project, which emphasized observation…

Now that Colonel Muammar Gaddafi is dead and his forty-two years as despotic ruler of Libya and fomenter of international disorder has come to a permanent halt, it is a good time for governments--both in and beyond the NATO alliance--to review accommodations and agreements made with his regime. It is also time for the academic social policy…

Since the seventeenth century, there have been two narratives about modernity in general and America in particular. The author uses the term "narrative" to include (a) facts, (b) arguments, and most important, (c) a larger vision of how one sees the world and chooses to engage the world. The first and originalist narrative is the Lockean Liberty…

This article presents the author's critique on a new report titled "A Crucible Moment: College Learning and Democracy's Future", and focuses on civic education and civic engagement. The Obama administration's new report confronts a genuine problem in American education. The decline of civic education and knowledge in America is one of the few…

In this article, the author talks about "A Crucible Moment: College Learning & Democracy's Future." There is a moment within "A Crucible Moment: College Learning & Democracy's Future" when the report gets it right. The academics tackle a National Governors Association study that envisions colleges as job training centers. The authors of "A…

This "crucible moment" in which democratic capitalism finds itself does not call for more government mandates to dictate progressive activism in higher education. Rather, this crucible moment calls higher education on its own initiative to focus on the moral foundation that both democracy and capitalism require. The foundation of democratic…

In this article, the author talks about the report "A Crucible Moment: College Learning & Democracy's Future," which provides a blueprint of what higher education ought "not" to do. The document was produced by the Association of American Colleges & Universities (AAC&U), an organization with a long history not only of demanding the advancement of…

A "civic recession" is as worrisome as an economic recession. "A Crucible Moment: College Learning & Democracy's Future" (The National Task Force on Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement, 2012) should be praised for acknowledging the peril and seeking to rebuild the "depleted civic capital." Welcome, too, is the report's conviction that…

The latest episode in the long-running struggle for control of the Constitution, and the political power that goes with it, is playing out in the federal courts in California. The contending philosophies are originalism, which holds that the Constitution should be read as it was originally understood by the framers and ratifiers, and the congeries…

In the nearly ten years since the attacks by Muslim terrorists on 9/11, people have seen an exponential growth in homegrown radical Islam, or Islamism. Insufficiently recognized and acknowledged, this metastasis has produced its natural, deadly effects: jihad against American citizens on their own soil. Some analysts cite "the narrative" as the…

Berkeley professor of linguistics and cognitive science George Lakoff is among the handful of current faculty members in the United States to have successfully recast himself as a significant figure in national politics. Though his views place rather far on the progressive left, he has, unlike some other scholar-activists, focused most of his…