At a time when mistrust is at its highest levels since the Civil War, we have to work together like we haven't since World War II.  New understandings and new forms of engagement are going to be nece...

27 July, 2021

Presidential transitions are normally quiet affairs. This year's, belated to begin with, promises to be long, and touch all aspects of American life as few have seen government so much as attempt...

13 April, 2021

Normally we put this issue out in early January, but this year, 2020 lasted longer than usual, all the way to December 51st.  The good news is that even though 2020 seemed to go on forever, it produc...

28 February, 2021

This past month, American democracy had a near-death experience. It's clear that we need to treat not just the symptoms, but the disease, and find ways to prevent it from recurring, but how?...

15 December, 2020

If you think you’ve seen this movie before, you have.  It’s not Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, though.  It’s Donald Trump making baseless claims about the system being rigged...

15 November, 2020

We yearn for simplicity, we rely on small business for jobs & innovation, technology & globalization provide unprecedented opportunities for the small. And yet everywhere smallness looks to be endang...

12 October, 2020

It may seem like we are in a long national nightmare from which we will never awaken.  But that need not be, if we citizens remember that America is the land of second chances, but not straight lines...

03 March, 2020

Last year, we took our February fingertips to the United Kingdom; this year's travelogue landed us in India, the world's largest democracy, struggling with challenges that eerily mirror our own......

10 February, 2020

Out of the tumult of 2019 have emerged many inspiring stories and ideas, which we celebrate with our second annual "best of" edition, recognizing both the posts and stories you, our community, liked b...

04 January, 2020

The Latin root of education, educare, means to lead out. In a 'post-truth' world, teachers, the nation's curators and explainers of knowledge, are going to play an outsized role in holding our republ...

10 December, 2019

When is enough enough? It's a question we must ask with respect to so many aspects of our lives in these times. In politics today, the query is with us daily, because impeachment is the Constitution's...

10 November, 2019

Our greatest president, Abraham Lincoln, once observed: "Capital is only the fruit of labor. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."  How times have changed--a...

06 October, 2019

Since his election, the current President and his administration have fractured American democracy and divided its citizenry, most painfully and personally along generational lines. The steps that cit...

03 September, 2019

"It's a republic, not a democracy" say the defenders of minority rule, sliding into authoritarianism. For the founders, and Noah Webster after them, there wasn't remotely as much daylight between t...

09 August, 2019

It was an American, General Douglas MacArthur, who coined the phrase “rules are made to be broken.” Rule breaking and rule rewriting have been American traditions since the founding of the nation....

03 July, 2019

Infrastructure Week has become a running gag, but it's no laughing matter; our infrastructure is not only key to overcoming a surprising array of challenges we face, but may be our best chance to unit...

31 May, 2019

The bright side of our current political environment is that there has been a renewed focus on civic engagement. In this edition we highlight selected activities in this emerging era of 21st century ...

05 May, 2019

Issues of opportunity, the common good, and government’s role in promoting each have been fundamental since the founding of the Republic. How they are addressed and who benefits has not always been ...

07 April, 2019

The Greek root for "-topia" is "topos," which just means "place," as in "topography." As we map the future, whether technology will produce a utopia, a dystopia, or just what a techtopia is genericall...

03 March, 2019

It's customary for many publications to wrap up the year with "best of" lists of one kind or another. For each of our standard categories, we present the articles that you liked the best--people's cho...

31 December, 2018

The November elections were like rains in California fire country, or calm blue skies in Florida after a monster tropical depression. When we survive a brush with death in a natural disaster, our tas...

05 December, 2018

People are saying' we can't tax (or spend) our way out of the challenges ahead of us. They're right. To take on problems that seem so much bigger than we are, we can't just eat the pie, we have to mak...

08 November, 2018

Never in our lifetimes has the famous aphorism of early 18th century Prussian general and military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, that 'politics is war by other means,' seemed so apt......

05 October, 2018

The 'post-truth' era of 'alternative facts' obscures a deeper reality. That in politics, as in life, it's not what we don't know that's getting us into trouble, it's what we're sure we know that just ...

09 September, 2018

In times like these, moral arcs become a source of comfort. Should they be? We trace these rainbows across the sky of history–individual, social, even biological......

06 July, 2018

Announcing the Frank Islam Institute for 21st Century Citizenship, created to address an increasing civic engagement deficit and enhance the concept of citizenship for the challenges and opportunities...

22 January, 2018