The most memorable three words of the French national anthem, La Marseillaise, may well be: “Aux armes, citoyens.” Composed in the immediate aftermath of the French Revolution and five years after the ratification of the US Constitution, the anthem’s lyrics dramatically recreate the...
It is a well-established fact that America, as it approaches its 245th birthday, is a divided nation. Red versus blue, conservative versus liberal, right versus left, black versus white, rich versus (a growing number of) poor, urban versus rural. Further divisions may be drawn along education,...
On the centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment in August, the Ohio State University College of Arts and Sciences hosted a conversation with a panel of experts. They discuss the legacy of enfranchisement, gender disparity in elected officials and how history informs the US election.
As America’s 2020 Independence Day fades from memory, many things are clearer. Americans love to go to beaches and bars as their petri dishes of choice, masks are a better idea than they were before Independence Day, there will never be a national pandemic response as long as Trump is president,...
The major political news in the US from last week concerned the coronavirus bailout bill eventually agreed by both parties and submitted for signing by President Donald Trump. One controversial part of the law focusing on helping businesses in distress drew the ire of Democrats, who worried that...
Does US culture’s problem of defining words explain the current state of political confusion? The Daily Devil's Dictionary reports. Perhaps the two most problematic words in the English language in the US are “amendment” and “right.” The Washington Post reports on what is being called...
How Democracies Die is less about preaching to the choir and more about encouraging voters to re-examine their thinking. The New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, provides a fascinating analysis of threats to democracy in comparative...
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, has allowed us to move from the fun of confrontation to the fatality of contradiction. Two stories in the news this week appear both highly dramatic and profoundly comic, highlighting the age-old phenomenon of cognitive dissonance, that...
Launching missiles against another country is nothing short of an act of war. The Constitution gives Congress the sole authority to declare war, not the president. When he ordered a “surgical” bombing strike against Syria in retaliation for Bashar al-Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons...
