Health care presents unique challenges to elected officials. Without some public regulation, market failures will lead to consequences many voters would find unacceptable, as Kenneth Arrow explained long ago in a seminal essay. Among the problems that inevitably arise is the collision of risk aversion among consumers, which leads them to seek insurance protection against expensive medical services, with the ability of insurers to steer clear of potential customers who can be identified as high risks because of their health conditions. Without governmental intervention, the market will drift to ..read more

Reading Daphne Barak-Erez’s marvelously thought-provoking book, Biblical Judgments, I was reminded many times of the Northrop Frye quotation with which John Barton a few years ago opened his magnum opus, A History of the Bible (2019). Frye said of the Bible that it was a “huge, sprawling, tactless book sitting there inscrutably in the middle of our cultural heritage.” It refuses to be ignored, yet it bewilders, offering up its secrets only in the most mystifying of glimpses. Barak-Erez knows her Bible extremely well and demonstrates how the Hebrew Bible—aka the Old Testament—reflects and refra ..read more

In the 1990s, the American Left had no political significance, though it was copiously influential in shaping the minds of the young. This story has now been updated in the 2020s, a triumphant period for the American Left when it continues to win the battle for cultural hegemony not only in the classroom but also in the press, American sports, and corporations. Moreover, it now possesses enormous power to affect immediate events. What has happened? When the social unrest subsided in the seventies, radical graduate students retreated from the streets en masse and moved into the ivory tower, the ..read more

The meta topic sitting beneath the surface of Daniel Miller’s sprawling essay on revolution is a study on the nature of aristocracy and its role in an ordered self-governed society. In the modern context, “aristocracy” is believed to be those possessing the earmarks of inherited wealth, unearned social privilege, and personal vanity. Classically understood however, aristocracy is simply “the rule of the excellent” (from the Greek aristo or “excellence,” and kratos or “rule”), where according to Plato, governance is entrusted to individuals deemed to be of superior virtue, wisdom, and merit. No ..read more

It’s no exaggeration to say that America is in the midst of one of its fiercest economic policy debates for some time. But the current quarrel between economic nationalists and free marketers extends beyond domestic policy. Whether conducted via long-form articles or duked out on X (formerly Twitter) by dirigiste senators and their free market critics, China looms large in the back-and-forth. The much-debated relationship between trade and national security forms part of that discussion. Yet so too do arguments about whether American policymakers in the late 1990s placed too much faith in mark ..read more

There is probably no more respected or prominent compassionate social critic of millennials and Gen Z than Dr. Jonathan Haidt. Since his book The Coddling of the American Mind blasted on the scene, validating conservative fears about cancel culture while staying squarely in the classical liberal tradition, Haidt has managed to do something few academic public intellectuals can: gain a wide, bipartisan public following while retaining the respect of academic intellectuals. Since the publication of that book, Haidt has continued his research into the mental health problems of the rising generati ..read more

The zeitgeist of the week, if we are to countenance viral memes, is this: “The Rich Get Richer, The Lazy Live for Free, and the Middle Class Pays for it All!” It’s catchy—no doubt in part because it isn’t overtly partisan. It’s also a modern take on an old and familiar refrain and therefore seems to strike a chord with the millions who glibly pass it along as a sort of common-sense observation that most people can identify with. But how true is it, really? Percy Bysshe Shelley (whose wife Mary famously penned Frankenstein) is credited with first coining the aphorism “the rich get richer, the ..read more

They call him Da Liu: Big Liu. A looser translation might be “the big kahuna,” the one who needs no introduction. Many American viewers of Netflix’s new interstellar drama, 3 Body Problem, are unfamiliar with the trilogy of books it’s based on (collectively titled Remembrance of Earth’s Past) and their author, Liu Cixin. But in his native country, he is a literary sensation, the kingpin of Chinese science fiction. Science fiction, in turn, is no escapist diversion in China. It is an imaginative exercise pursued in deadly earnest, an expression of national aspirations to technological supremacy ..read more

Last month I was at a book launch in Washington, DC. This was an event for Republicans—sparsely attended. Older gentlemen and ladies who may have been notable once were obviously struggling with anonymity, looking for people they themselves might know without looking too eager to everyone else. Of course, there were almost no young people except the waiting staff. I knew maybe five people there and wondered what they were doing there; and vice versa. This was a cultural event, so that adds to the embarrassment in the most transactional city in America. What else to do but network halfheartedly ..read more

Every new regime not born from revolutionary violence must win the support of an elite to survive. Mere theories of sound social arrangements do not suffice. A powerful cohort must be invested in the regime’s success, ready to uphold its ideals. Lacking allies to enforce its vision, a regime’s framework may ironically undermine the principles it is designed to uphold. An entrenched opposing elite can turn the discretion inherent in all political settlements against the objectives of their proponents. In American history, for instance, consider how a Federalist elite, entrenched in the federal ..read more