Johann’s Substack 2/12/2025 We must accept what is happening
Politics
Nonprofits Are at the Core of American Democracy. Now They’re Under Threat
TIME 1/2/2025 The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed a bill that would allow the President to take away the tax-exempt status of any nonprofit organization that he determines is providing material support for terrorism. Although existing law already...
America’s Exclusion Crisis
Liberties 9/1/2021 In the late 1670s and early 1680s, when John Locke first put pen to paper to work on The Two Treatises of Government, he was grappling with a question unnervingly familiar to contemporary Americans. The king, Charles II, had made clear through his...
Tocqueville, Violence, and the Contemporary Crisis of American Partisanship
Tocqueville 7/28/2021 At the end of Volume I of Democracy in America, in a section entitled “On Republican Institutions in the United States: What Are the Chances of Their Survival,” Alexis de Tocqueville offered his readers some optimism. While the particular form of...
Will We Still be American after Democracy Dies?
Public Seminar 7/7/2020 There is a real possibility that American democracy will die come November. I hope not. I pray not. But I worry. Many scenarios that would have once appeared fantastic, now seem to be within the realm of the possible. One does not need a vivid...
The Next Victim of the Coronavirus? American Exceptionalism
The Washington Post 5/3/2020 Discarding this myth can be a good thing — if we restore what actually made America great in the past
The war on Christmas is a civil war
USA Today 12/21/2017 We used to be able to share Christmas with everyone, regardless of faith. I want that back.