“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...

There’s a moment in Cool Hand Luke when Luke, played by Paul Newman, is returned to a prison camp after escaping. Determined to break his will, the guards order him to dig a hole. After the hole is dug, another guard instructs him to fill it in. Dig. Fill. Dig. Fill. The exercise is not about punishment. It’s about submission....

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...

I began watching 60 Minutes when it premiered on September 24, 1968, when Harry Reasoner and Mike Wallace introduced a new kind of television journalism: “a magazine for television,” flexible enough to go wherever the stories — and the facts — led. What followed was more than a CBS program. For me, it became a Sunday night institution. Under Don...

What will it take to restore the values we claim to believe in before the damage becomes irreversible? They will not be restored by slogans, speeches, campaign promises, or nostalgia for a past that was never as simple—or as noble—as we often imagine. Nor will they be restored by demanding better leadership while excusing ourselves from the responsibility to live...

As distilled from an email update from Michael Waldman, President and CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court struck down what remains of the Voting Rights Act. Soon, it will rule on the president’s birthright citizenship executive order, one that, as Waldman writes, “could upend what it means to be an American.” That is not...

Britain’s King Charles III spoke to a chamber that, for a moment, set aside party labels—Democrat and Republican—and listened not as factions, but as participants in a relationship that has endured for more than two centuries. What stood out in Charles’s address was not grandeur, but restraint. Not proclamation, but purpose. And beneath it all, a quiet ethical framework worth...

What does leadership require when decisions send others into harm’s way, and uncertainty is shared not just by those in command, but by the nation itself? General Dwight D. Eisenhower once observed that “the supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity.” Not confidence. Not control. Integrity. And it is precisely that quality that is tested when clarity is hardest to...

What will define us at 250 years—not our disagreements, but what we are willing to believe about one another, and about the truth itself? As we approach the 250th anniversary of our democratic republic, I find myself returning to a familiar concern, now sharpened by the widening divide in our country. Disagreement has always been part of the American story....

On Thursday, three days before Easter Sunday, Pope Leo XIV delivered a message that went straight to the point. “Leadership is not measured by authority, but by the willingness to kneel.” That’s humility. Not the kind we admire in passing. The kind that asks something of us. Today, when leadership is measured by loudness and control, Leo offered a different...