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A Moral Abdication  

Reckoning with the past is a struggle that should be constantly engaged in, and nowhere more than in universities, in regard to their own histories. Avoiding this struggle is not an acceptance of the past. It is, rather, a moral abdication.







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Sanders and the S Word  

Why does the white-haired firebrand from Vermont insist on identifying himself with socialism, a political faith that has never been popular in the United States?



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Booked: The War on Booze  

An interview with historian Lisa McGirr about her new book The War On Alcohol, and why Prohibition was more important than most people think.





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Trumping History  

The Trump phenomenon is best understood as an amalgam of three different, largely pathological strains in American history and culture.



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Booked: The Meaning of the Fourth of July  

Americans revere the Declaration of Independence, but most of us don’t read it. Timothy Shenk spoke with Danielle Allen about the document’s relevance for how we understand liberty and equality in the United States today.







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The Wonder-Bread Independents  

In a season marked by sour voters and bitter campaigns, independent candidates hold out the promise of sweet transcendence. South Dakota independent candidate Larry Pressler pledges to break up the “lobbyist-controlled spending and taxing cycle [and] poisonous partisan fights” if elected to the …