Looking Ahead: eBook 8 – The Republic Itself

The tension between order and liberty mapped in this volume – the question of how much force the state may wield and how much speech it must endure – is not merely a policy debate. It is the rehearsal for the final question, the one that subsumes all others: Can the republic itself survive?

In the eighth and final volume, The Republic Itself: Foreign Policy, Electoral Reform, and the Future of Self-Governance, we turn outward and then inward. Chapter 15 examines America’s role in the world – the wars it fights, the alliances it keeps, the question of whether a nation this divided at home can still lead abroad. Chapter 16 confronts the machinery of democracy itself – gerrymandering, the Electoral College, voter access, and whether the rules of the game are still fair enough for the losers to keep playing. These are the questions that will determine whether the arguments in the preceding seven volumes remain arguments – conducted with words, within institutions, under law – or become something far worse. The Republic does not sustain itself. It is sustained by citizens who believe it is still worth sustaining. That belief is the subject of our final volume.

Avoiding Civil War II: Why Everyone Should Calm Down, Relax, and Think About Things Book 7 of 8 – Order and Liberty: Policing and Free Speech