Author: Joel Levin

This past week, in Dobbs v. Jackson Woman’s Health, the U.S. Supreme Court fundamentally changed the law of abortion in the United States. The case involved a Mississippi statute that, essentially, prevented almost all abortions after 15 weeks.

The January 6 Committee hearings bring upon those concerned and horrified by the Capitol insurrection a certain malaise, a deep and foreboding anxiety, a feeling that all of this is for naught.

We should take it as a mark of reasonable judgment not to consider the moderately problematic the same as the extremely problematic, to be unsurprised when anticipated action comport with expected results, and not to shift standards in similar situations without extremely good reasons.

As we watch in horror the destruction of Ukraine – the decimation of its buildings and cities, its armies and airfields, its men, women and children – we equally see the outright lies about what is happening from Russia and from its friends.

Democracy is a strange, unwieldy, flawed, and maddening thing, rife with failures, crowded with bullies, full of misfortune, and embarrassed by contradictions. Those who claim to be brilliant political theorists or shrewd social observers try to construct better political systems, which, at least since John Locke in the late 17th century, has meant a democratic system.