“Cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government.”—George Washington’s Farewell Address, 1796 “Our machines and ballot counting systems are exposed to hacking and manipulation and corruption…. Hundreds of thousands of non-citizens and dead people are listed and active on the voter rolls.”—Donald Trump, Election...

I recently read a book by a man who has learned some of life’s hardest lessons and, by his own account, is still learning them every day. He is not an evangelist. He is not selling salvation. He is not offering a miracle cure for what ails us. The lessons he shares come from his own life—one very different from mine....

Much has been written about George Washington, our first American president: his command of the Continental Army, his leadership in the fragile birth of a new nation, and his presidency. But less attention has been paid to Washington the person, the private Washington, whose conduct set a standard that may be even more urgently needed today. At a time when...

Conclusion: The Words That Made Us and Still Must.  In December of 1776, the Revolution was not moving toward triumph. It was close to collapse. Washington’s army was exhausted. Enlistments were running out. Men who had already given much were being asked to give more. Then Thomas Paine’s words were read aloud… …  “These are the times that try men’s...

Part 2: Common Sense Are we still capable of that kind of clarity when it matters most? There was a moment in the birth of the country when uncertainty did not simply fade; it was confronted. Not with noise or outrage, but with moral clarity. A moment when a divided people were forced to face a harder question: not what...

For the most part, my high school history classes consisted of names, dates, documents, and battles. What I’ve learned since then — through historians like Doris Kearns-Goodwin, David McCullough, Ken Burns, and others — is that history comes alive when we discover the human stories behind the events. One of those stories belongs to John Hart of New Jersey, a...

Lately, I’ve been reading more history, mostly to educate myself. But the other night, I opened Lord Acton’s Lectures on the French Revolution and didn’t get far before I sat up in bed. I was reading about France two centuries ago, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the comparisons to Washington today. To be honest, most of what I remember...

Last August, I wrote that I was “stepping back from the chaos” of Donald Trump. I meant to write about his presidency only when his actions were significant. That was the naïve part. This is not Republican versus Democrat. This is democracy versus authoritarianism: 2025–2026 — Turned pressure on universities into national policy.After targeting individual universities with investigations and funding...

What kind of leadership… what kind of citizenship, will it take to restore and live the values we claim to believe? It begins with service. Leadership without service is merely power. Public office was never meant to be a stage for self-glorification. It was meant to be a trust.  A president’s first question shouldn’t be, “How do I win?” but,...

Walter Isaacson’s latest book, The Greatest Sentence Ever Written, has arrived at a pivotal moment for the country: the 250th anniversary of the American experiment. I found it especially meaningful at a time when we need to return to the words that first set America on the path toward democracy. This should be more than a season of fireworks and...