Columns

In 2014, Roger was a regular contributor to The American Interest, providing commentary on politics, culture, and global affairs. A selection of his pieces is featured below.

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?”

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 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.

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 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 Two American Constitutional Freedoms — The U.S. Constitution encompasses two different ideas of liberty that operate in tension.

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.

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.

When The Hell That Is War Loses Its Power — “Between Sovereign states there can be no last resort except war; if war no longer serves that purpose, that fact alone proves that we must have a new concept of the state.” —Hannah Arendt, in an interview with Adelbert Reif, 1970.

The Unknown Within Ourselves — The political importance of privacy is plurality. Only when people grow and mature in a protected world of home and hearth can they find the space and freedom to think independently and thus differently.

The Lottery — Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”, published 66 years ago this week, is indeed shocking, but as much for its simplistic and pessimistic account of inherent human evil than for its courage in facing up to reality.

The Conscience of Edward Snowden — To say that Snowden acted according to his conscience, but then to excuse his decision to become a fugitive and argue we should ignore his character and focus on what his acts revealed, is to mistake the nature and importance of conscientious action.

Thinking Straight About Teacher Tenure — Tenure is not the only or even the main reason that we have bad teachers in primary and secondary schools in California or elsewhere. But nevertheless, we should not shy away from asking, “Whom does tenure benefit?”

Jonathan Galassi on the Futurists — When no values are worth fighting for, all that matters is the fight itself, and victory, no matter what the cause. It’s both a understandable and eminently dangerous sentiment that has led to much suffering in the 20th century.

The True American — An excellent book about America, hate, and redemption—at once despairing of and affirming the American dream—is your weekend read.

Is Democracy Over? — We are witnessing a crisis of democracy around the world, in the sense that both established and newer democracies are finding their populations dissatisfied. But that doesn’t mean we should write democracy off completely either.

Which Freedom? — Adrian Wooldridge and John Micklethwait have written a compelling new book on rethinking the state. Its only weakness is its somewhat narrow understanding of freedom in terms of a kind of consumerist individualism.

Equality and Singularity — There’s a new book out about inequality written by a Frenchman. But unlike the one that’s getting all the press, this one is more sanguine about the politics surrounding inequality.

Race, Democracy, and the Constitution — Granting preferential admissions to universities on the basis of race is impermissible if not unconstitutional. That is the correct decision the Supreme Court made this week. That does not mean, of course, that we shouldn’t try to address both racial and class discrimination in higher education.

Heidegger, Being Human, and Antisemitism — Can Martin Heidegger’s Nazism and antisemitism be separated out from his philosophical project?

Marx’s Heirs — Marxism is back, and Thomas Piketty’s new book “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” might be its new Bible. But both Piketty and the Marxist movement miss the real danger of inequality.

The Disturbing Rise of Mass Denationalization — Mass denationalization of citizens was a vicious aspect of 20th century totalitarian regimes, and it appears to be coming back.

Give Me Peace Or Give Me Death — Ukraine could very well decide the future of Europe: there EU leaders must decide what they are fighting for.

Is There Hope for Campaign Finance Reform? — Supporters of campaign finance reform keep trying to fix our current system from within. But it’s time to change to our campaign finance system itself.

European Solidarity for What? — Europe’s ability to address the challenges of the 21st century hangs on one thing: it must decide what it is.

The Preferential President — President Obama has preferences, not convictions, yet he continues to take strong stands in public. This is a dangerous combination.

Why the Jews? — Making anti-semitism into an eternal problem, some scholars of Judaism actually wind up normalizing anti-Judaism.

The Irony of the Elite — The elites in Washington and Wall Street seem not to care about their decadence and even take joy in revelations about it.

Privacy and Politics — Privacy is important, but not for the reasons privacy activists usually cite.

The Woody Allen Affair and the Nihilism of Thinking — The Woody Allen affair teaches us that one of the great challenges of our time is the need to judge absent the solace of absolute knowledge or the illusions of certitude.

Is There Such a Thing as Too Much Free Speech? — There’s a natural desire to withdraw from the sheer quantity of online content floating around, but political thinking requires that we resist the desire to flee from opinions altogether.

The End of American Exceptionalism — American exceptionalism is in retreat, and the centralized national security state is to blame.