Knox County’s $700 Million Question: Leadership or Excuses?
Thursday night’s Knox County GOP mayoral debate did not turn on a dramatic exchange or a viral moment. No sharp […]
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The Vice President Who Announces His Own Defeat
American democracy contains a few rituals so strange that they almost feel like political theater. One of them unfolds every
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Hockey Night and the Theater of Parenting
Lisa and I enjoy going to the Knoxville Ice Bears games. Hockey offers a pleasant mixture of athletic skill and
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The Art of the Colonoscopy
A Maintenance Inspection of the Republic of Me At fifty-six years of age, preventive maintenance no longer feels elective. It
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The Rambo Doctrine: From Hollywood Myth to Presidential Statecraft
First Blood The opening scene of First Blood does not begin with a war. The opening scene begins with restraint.
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Any Fool Can Go Viral: Stone-Throwers vs. Builders
Madison, Paine, and the Discipline to Construct a Republic Any fool can tear a house down. Gravity performs most of
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What Marriage Asks of Us
Valentine’s Day approaches as I write these words, and Lisa does not yet know this essay exists. Writing to the
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Three Answers to Altruism: Madison, Rand, and Jesus
Three traditions, one problem: how societies cope with imperfect human beings Modern political arguments often collapse into a single moral
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Why Nixon Waited and Gore Went to Court
How Primary Reform Changed the Meaning of Losing Two of the closest presidential elections in American history ended very differently.
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How Primaries Unmade the Parties—and Why Demagoguery Filled the Gap
Americans did not set out to weaken political parties. The opposite impulse drove reform. In the late 1960s and early
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