As we move through the latter stages of this presidential primary campaign, with all its disgusting rhetoric and lack of substance, I have sought respite from the depressing news the campaign brings every day, so I have receded into history in my studies. I am poring through the work of some of our greatest leaders […]
There has long been an interest among Americans in the rationale and intentions of those who helped write our Constitution. This fascination suggests a consensus that certain qualities of the Constitution played a role in setting the United States on its path to prosperity and international influence. This also suggests that there are many who […]
To continue to piece together the puzzle of partisan polarization, I turned to one of the great scholars of behavioral economics, Mancur Olson. Professor Olson’s work, The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities seeks to explain how his theories of collective action in societies can lead to suboptimal outcomes in […]
After reviewing It’s Even Worse Than It Looks, I was ready for some other possible explanations for our polarization problem. As I mentioned at the end of my last post, James Piereson’s Shattered Consensus: The Rise and Decline of America’s Postwar Political Order seemed like it could be an antidote. Although the book is a […]
A few years ago, I was blessed to have picked up a copy of J.M. Roberts’s “A Short History of the World” and my life has never been the same. I had never before conceived of history with such broad strokes — where patterns manifest themselves over hundreds or even thousands of years. It was a true […]
Economists are in the business of predicting events. They spend their days combing through data, looking for patterns that lead to models which ostensibly help us better predict which fiscal or monetary policy will create a desired outcome. But in the final analysis, the most consequential events are the hardest (read: impossible) to predict, as […]
What made Lincoln great? Was it his war leadership, his steadfast honesty, the compelling nature of his life story? A combination of these? Was it his emancipation of American slaves? While it is hard to pinpoint any single quality or achievement that has made Lincoln into a demigod of American history, many would agree that […]
