I recently read about a group of explorers who located a ship deep beneath the dark, cold waters off Antarctica: a vessel whose very name says a great deal about the man who once led her. Ernest Shackleton’s greatness didn’t come from a great feat. It came from the humility to set aside his own ambition the moment his men...

During his years in wartime London, U.S. Ambassador John Gilbert Winant absorbed the suffering around him. He was known for walking the streets during the Blitz, talking with ordinary people, sharing in their daily fears, helping to strengthen their resolve. Londoners remembered him for his compassion and accessibility. Historians consistently note how deeply he internalized the city’s suffering. He carried...

John Gilbert Winant was one of the rarest of figures in public life: a three-term Republican governor from New Hampshire whose leadership wasn’t calculated but instinctive; a public servant who treated humility as a strength, and a diplomat who put principle ahead of political convenience. Yet for all the steadiness he gave to others, he struggled to find a place...

I’ve played chess about two dozen times, and every match feels less like a game and more like mental boot camp. It’s not difficult; it’s torture. Each move demands navigating hundreds of possible combinations in your head before making a single move. Then I came across a grandmaster whose strategy began long before the first pawn moved. Her preparation wasn’t...

Writer David Brooks is rarely prone to hyperbole and often resists the easy pull of partisanship. A thoughtful conservative who has moved toward the center, he writes to understand politics through the lens of conscience—reminding readers that integrity, not ideology, should guide the debate. Like Brooks, I believe that integrity is vital to a thriving democracy. Like Brooks, I believe...

I happened across Frances Perkins while searching files at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library. She was the first woman in U.S. history to serve in a cabinet post, as Secretary of Labor under the most consequential president of the era. She shined brightest, not in seeking headlines, but in advancing the rights and well-being of ordinary Americans. Born in...

In every generation, there are a few public servants who stand as reminders of what political courage truly means. George W. Norris, the five-term Republican U.S. Senator from Nebraska, was one of them—a man who placed principle above party and conscience above convenience. His long career was defined not by ambition or allegiance, but by an unshakable devotion to fairness,...

When I first read Common Sense in college—admittedly, more out of assignment than interest—I understood its place in history but not its wisdom. I recognized that Thomas Paine had written something important, but I didn’t yet grasp why it mattered so deeply: that his words were not just a call for freedom from a king’s rule, but a moral awakening—a...

Washington is far too often remembered for its scandals than its triumphs—a reality that would have stunned and saddened our first president. Yet history’s true measure lies with those who chose conscience over expedience, and duty over ambition.  Their choices came at a cost, but they show us what integrity in public life looks like—and how it can still guide...

The murder of Charlie Kirk–gunned down while speaking at Utah Valley University–is another brutal reminder of how political beliefs can metastasize into hatred. On the night of April 4, 1968, after learning that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated, Robert F. Kennedy stood on the back of a flatbed truck before a largely African American crowd in Indianapolis...