Our political system no longer works, and neither does Congress -- well, except for itself. The current Republican Congress, in particular, is on the verge of proving how utterly useless it is. If there was one thing a Republican Congress was supposed to do, it was to repeal and replace Obamacare. Republicans have been campaigning against it since 2010. Yet they are failing those who elected them, yet again. The problem is that our political system was designed to work only if our leaders com...

Vietnam. Iraq. Maybe North Korea next. Why does the United States keep doing this? Why are we so often at war? American foreign and defense policy no longer makes sense. They are suited to the Cold War, but the Cold War has been over for 27 years. We are long overdue for a re-evaluation of our nation’s strategic place in the world. And for far less war making. America’s Cold War strategy was a thoughtful and rational response to the post-World War II global environment. War had left most of th...

For someone who ardently believed in witches and sea monsters, the puritan firebrand Cotton Mather was a surprising advocate for advanced medical science. When some sailors brought smallpox to Boston in 1721, Mather forcefully promoted a new and dubious-sounding preventative, called “inoculation.” He had first heard about the procedure from one of his African slaves. The process involved smearing puss from the corpuscles of infected people into wounds deliberately cut into healthy people. Und...

Our political system is failing because our government has become little more than a perpetual banquet for selfish interests that feed themselves first, and worry about the health of the nation later, if at all (See part 1 in this series). This is the situation in which we now find ourselves, and it must be reversed. For "we the people" to fix the system, here is an uncontroversial, common sense, and unifying organizing principle: Remove from the American political system every incentive that...

American politics is self-evidently in a state of crisis. The nation is producing terrible political leadership. Government is paralyzed. Political polarization is ripping American society into two warring camps. The above assertions will be almost universally recognized as the truth. But when we ask about the source of the crisis, that’s when the agreement breaks down. That’s when we fall back into our states of partisan rage and blame the other side. The crisis, however, is not primarily th...

The fury over the proper posture to assume during the national anthem at NFL games represents everything that is wrong with American politics. Massive and community-destroying controversy is created by selfish and self-absorbed elites while accomplishing absolutely nothing positive for ordinary people or those in need. President Trump knew exactly what he was doing when he criticized NFL players for taking a knee during the national anthem. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/911904261...

I am being manipulated, and so are you. Conservatives are being manipulated. Progressives are being manipulated. We the people have lost control of our government and are being used by selfish and partisan interests hostile to our common good. Most citizens have at least some vague notion about this manipulation. But then the latest eloquent political hate message - one that really puts the other side in its place - appears on our Facebook page. We share it, as if launching a rhetorical grenade...