
Against the Politics of Permanent Emergency
Treating every dispute as an existential crisis was supposed to raise the stakes. It has mostly exhausted the people who have to live inside the argument.
Arguments about how a republic is supposed to work.

Treating every dispute as an existential crisis was supposed to raise the stakes. It has mostly exhausted the people who have to live inside the argument.

Deliberation is treated as an obstacle to be routed around. Most of what it produces cannot be produced any other way.
Almost nobody has detailed policy knowledge, and democracies function anyway. Understanding why matters more than lamenting the gap.

Attachment to a country is usually expressed as a claim about its past. It works better as a claim about obligations in the present.