I'm really excited to announce that I have written my first book!. THE REACTIONARY SPIRIT, coming next year from @public_affairs, explains why so many long-stable democracies are in danger today. It's a crisis I trace back to a conflict at the heart of democracy itself.

It's going to be a lot harder for Trump to turn ICE into an effective secret police force than people think

RT @dylanmatt: I'm out here changing lives, inspiring donations, ending marriages

My new feature looks at why two prominent critics of liberalism, @SohrabAhmari and @samuelmoyn, are rethinking their previous critiques

RT @samuelmoyn: Good piece: Liberalism is worth saving. Just ask its critics. | Vox

This makes me relatively optimistic about the survival of American democracy, but more pessimistic than I've ever been about US ability to outcompete China and maintain a broadly liberal world order.

That creates the conditions not for one bloc to establish a hegemonic regime, either socialist or center-left or Trumpist authoritarian. It's a recipe for political whiplash and policy chaos.

Everyone wants to claim that their ideology has the key to winning over those anti-system voters. But I think that's mistaken: there is a decisive bloc that just doesn't like the way things are, and is willing to see-saw between radically different figures promising change.

My book focused on the rise of anti-democratic reaction on the right, because that's where the acute threat is coming from. But the people I write about are a minority of the electorate: they need support from the disaffected middle to win general elections.

Increasingly think that generalized, ideologically non-specific anti-system thinking is at the heart of America's political crisis.

Happy birthday to the greatest articulation of critical American patriotism, Frederick Douglass’ “What, to the Slave, is the Fourth of July”

The bar is high, but I think this is the dumbest anti-Zohran argument I've read so far

I think this is certainly true ideologically, as most of the country isn't NYC. Zohran's impact will be most felt, I suspect, in strategy and style. Tons of candidates will copy his media strategy and focus on cost-of-living, even if their substantive politics are different.

RT @baseballot: I know it's fashionable to say scandals don't matter anymore, but Cuomo really did have a huge weight around his neck. Fede….

It’s an extremely open question whether Trump’s actions increased or decreased the odds of an Iranian bomb. My money is on the former.

RT @NatashaBertrand: Exclusive: US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities did not destroy the core components of the country’s nuclear progra….

RT @ArmsControlWonk: This is false. Iran stored most of the 400 kg of HEU in tunnels at Isfahan. Neither the US nor Israel struck those t….

This isn't just my opinion. Two nuclear experts who generally disagree, Jeffrey Lewis and David Albright, both told NPR that what's been done isn't enough

Trump's ceasefire, while better than more war, makes me question what any of this accomplished. US/Israel haven't done enough damage to stop Iran from building a bomb in the near-to-medium term, if they so chose. And given this brush with regime change, why wouldn't they?.

RT @mattduss: Really hope this ceasefire holds but no one should miss that the Trump-Netanyahu war apparently managed to set back Iran’s nu….