U.S. History

On January 15, Wikipedia turns 20. Its anniversary is a good time to celebrate the success of a service that has become so useful to so many.

If California voters and politicians do not understand the current crisis, we will see the continuous march to perdition as California politicians refuse to acknowledge that they are killing the geese laying the golden eggs.

Coups are nearly always acts committed by elites against the sitting executive power using the tools of the elites. It's clear the elites want Trump gone, and Wednesday's riot was no coup. 

The United States has gone through at least six "party systems." Populism, war, or economic crises usually trigger a change from one system to another.

There are few sacred cows in American politics more revered than the New Deal. Yet the New Deal did nothing to end the Depression and it still negatively impacts our economy today. Now we're being told the United States needs a new New Deal.

Now is not the time to pine for the days of agreeable politics. In recent decades, the US has gone through radical political and cultural transformations that are making the country progressively ungovernable. 

Staten Island once voted 2-to-1 to leave New York City. The Manhattan overlords ignored the vote. But Staten Island would be better off as a separate city, and the same holds true for Brooklyn and Queens. 

The Boston Tea Party was an opening act in what came to be a violent culture war and war of national liberation. And it helps us understand how America in 2020 could become as bitterly divided as America during the revolution.

Tate Fegley reviews Elizabeth Hinton's book on mass incarceration, finding in it a good overview of US criminal justice from Kennedy to Reagan, but no clear, discernible thesis.

Abolishing the Electoral College is likely to worsen national conflict and disunity.