Today’s guest is University of Pennsylvania historian Sophia Rosenfeld, the author of The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life. Her book explores why we’ve come to basically equate having more personal choices with having more freedom. She stresses it wasn’t always this way—in the past, freedom was often defined as the ability to […]
There’s not a lot that unites Americans anymore, with too many people more aligned with their political tribes than with their shared nationality. But one thing that just about all of us like to do is bitch about people who hold government office. We don’t bitch about the same lawmakers and officials, but we have […]
Friday is the Fourth of July. What will you celebrate? Freedom from the English monarchy? To me, the Fourth is about freedom, period. When the Founders signed the Declaration of Independence, they put forth a radical idea: Rights don’t come from kings or presidents. They come from being human. Government’s job is to protect those […]
If you suspect that many Americans prize their partisan affiliations above their common status as U.S. citizens, the evidence keeps rolling in to support your position. Pride in being an American has reached an all-time low even as we prepare to celebrate Independence Day. More telling is that Americans’ pride—or lack thereof—in the one big […]
I was alone on a wide swath of soft grass near Shelburne, Vermont. A weekend away, phone off, brain quiet. I thought I’d listen to the wind rustling the cedar trees, but what I heard instead was the entire world. The rumble of a plane at 30,000 feet, whisking honeymooners to Mykonos or accountants to […]
It took a while. But the most recent federal holiday to be added to the calendar, it turns out, is the most American holiday yet. That holiday, Juneteenth, is today. It celebrates the abolition of chattel slavery in the U.S., marked by June 19, 1865—the day Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger informed slaves in Galveston, Texas, […]
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