Essays

The purpose of law is to produce different results in the real world than would obtain in the absence of law.  The purpose of criminalizing murder, for example, is to deter murder.  If absent law people did not commit murder, due (say) to a universally shared moral commitment to everyone’s inalienable right to life, then…

I was a 16-year-old virgin when Jeffrey Epstein first raped me. I was naive and gullible. He was a pillar of finance and a giant in the world that I was an insignificant part of. I was so impressed that this great man would even talk to me…[1] To demystify Jeffrey Epstein, he must first…

US President Donald Trump’s rhetoric about white Afrikaners draws on older patterns in American conservative politics, but it also marks an important shift.  In earlier periods, solidarity by American conservatives with white South Africa rested on two linked ideas: a racial logic that cast whites as uniquely capable of governing over blacks, and an anti-communist…

“Me! Me! Me! Me! Don’t you ever get tired of thinking about your dull, greedy, small self?” — Dave to his brother Frank, from Vincente Minnelli’s film Some Came Running, 1959 1 A Short History of America, in the Statements of Five Presidents 1941: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, addressing Congress: “…we look forward to a world…

I won’t be a dictator, “except on day one” – Donald Trump Axios (Basu & Davis, 2024) holds that President Trump promised to make 59 major policy changes the first day of his second term. The president’s declaration about limiting dictatorship to “day one” may lack veracity, but he has followed through on many of…

  Ideology is the most devilish variation of the lie – Hannah Arendt To speak of reaction is to counterpose it with progress. This terminology is not helpful. Stable issues of political life, such as legitimate authority, justice, transparent government, clarity on the means vs ends problem; along with issues of character such as fair-mindedness; respect…

The contentious United Nations COP30 climate summit, held in November 2025 in Belém, Brazil, provides a useful reference point for making sense of the host country’s global agenda, as well as president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s third term in office and broader political project. Analyzing the linkages between the domestic and international aspects of…

Commemorating a scholarly text now known only by title demands a certain circumspection that would not be required to honor a distinguished song, movie, or novel, each of which would boast a contingent of afficionados for whom allocating respect to the cultural product in question would be “natural.”  Music in particular summons up enthusiastic endorsement…