In 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville, a young French aristocrat and civil servant, made a nine-month journey through eastern America. The result was Democracy in America, a monumental study of the strengths and weaknesses of the nation's evolving politics. Tocqueville looked to the flourishing democratic system in America as a possible model for post-revolutionary France, believing its egalitarian ideals reflected the spirit of the age-even that they were...

"From the early days of the American republic, the nature of government "of the people, by the people, for the people" has been disputed. This is because there are not one but two very different notions of "We the People" and popular sovereignty, which yield competing schools of constitutional thought. The democrats view We the People collectively and think popular sovereignty resides in the people as a group. They view the Constitution as a living...

A rising China, climate change, terrorism, a nuclear Iran, a turbulent Middle East, and a reckless North Korea present serious challenges to our national security. But the biggest threat to the United States comes not from abroad-but from within. Burgeoning deficit and debt, crumbling infrastructure, second class schools, and an outdated immigration system have resulted in a country less competitive and far more vulnerable than it should be. In Foreign...

A history of the project of world government, from the first post-Napoleonic visions of the brotherhood of man to the current crisis of global finance.