American Exceptionalism
What Are We Fighting For?

Roger Berkowitz recently gave the opening lecture at the Hannah Arendt Center Conference “The Unmaking of Americans: Are There Still American Ideas Worth Fighting for?” The conference, held at Bard College, included talks by David Bromwich, Anand Girdirhardas, Kennan Ferguson, Jerome Kohn, Ann Lauterbach, Lawrence Lessig, Charles Murray, George Packer, Robert Post, Joan Richardson, Amity Shlaes, Jim Sleeper and Kendall Thomas. You can view the conference in its entirety here. For the weekend read this week, we provide an edited transcript of Professor Berkowitz’s speech: “American Exceptionalism: What Are We Fighting For?”

The Weekend Read
Fear, Faith, and Courage

Marilynne Robinson has, throughout her essays and fiction, looped an iron chord around the twinned facts of faith and the moral self.

The Weekend Read
The Twin Poles of American Integrity

Amid a growing consensus that Americans have lost faith in their country, ideas about strengthening institutions, on the one hand, and inspiring individual virtue, on the other, ought to be integrated.

The Weekend Read
Is America Coming Apart?

When the President speaks of American exceptionalism, conservatives disbelieve him while liberals cringe. But there is another reaction ascendant, arguing that whether American exceptionalism was once a force for good or for evil, it is now disappearing.

The Weekend Read
The Death of Adulthood?

The cultural abdication of adulthood that A.O. Scott describes in this week’s New York Times Magazine is real. We risk leaving to our children the impossible task of loving a world that we don’t respect enough to love ourselves.

The Banality of Evil
Did Eichmann Think?

A new book on Eichmann supposedly proves Arendt was wrong when she spoke about the “banality of evil”. But it turns out, that phrase of Arendt’s itself is greatly misunderstood.

The Weekend Read
The Poverty of Ideas

Our responses to the economic and political malaise that plagues us are mired in denial and debt. Our real problem is a failure to think.

The Weekend Read
The Two American Constitutional Freedoms

The U.S. Constitution encompasses two different ideas of liberty that operate in tension.

© Getty Images
The Weekend Read
The Radical As the Vanguard of the Status Quo

The middle ground in the tragic conflict between Israel and the Palestinians will never be found by insisting on either radically partial Zionist or anti-Zionist narratives that ignore the basic facts.

© Getty Images
The Weekend Read
A Sport of Nature

A Sport of Nature offers is a fictional meditation on the power of spontaneity in politics. It stands for the idea that no matter how dark the world the light of the human spirit can and will shine forth to bring a new day.

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.
© The American Interest LLC 2005-2024
About Us Privacy
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.