Three words carry the entire weight of the American constitutional order, and none of the three does any defining. "We the People" names a sovereign without ever saying who belongs to it — not a list, not a franchise requirement, […]
Our federalism pieces have spent months on a single recurring question: at what altitude should a given decision actually be made. [Splitting the Atom of Sovereignty](/posts/splitting-the-atom-of-sovereignty) described a constitutional design that keeps that question open and arguable rather than settling […]
[Splitting the Atom of Sovereignty](/posts/splitting-the-atom-of-sovereignty) described the American design as three layers of political authority, all tracing back to one root: the people themselves. [We the People](/posts/we-the-people) then asked what that root actually is — who counts as "We," and […]
Most of what a government is, historically, is one thing: a single will at the top, however that will gets chosen or replaced. A king, a parliament, a politburo — the label changes, but sovereignty itself stays whole, a single […]
Before the parties, before the manifestos, before anyone was arrested for it, most modern revolutionary movements began the same way: a handful of people meeting to read something together. Russians called the form the *kruzhok* — literally "little circle" — […]
adapted from Murray Bookchin — Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm Ideological individualism did not fade away altogether during this 19th century period of sweeping social unrest. A sizable reservoir of individualist anarchists, especially in the Anglo-American world, were nourished by the ideas of John Locke and John Stuart Mill, as well as […]
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