On Minilateralism, the Board of Peace, and the Unsentimental Case for Institutions That Work

The oldest surviving international organization was built to manage a river, not to redeem mankind. That modesty remains the surest measure of institutional worth.

The Cold Glow of Modern Empathy

Modern empathy has grown bloodless: performed, procedural, and safe. We feel for others at a distance, mediated by screens and scripts. True compassion demands risk and presence. Not “How do you feel?” but “What can I carry with you?”

Dancing while Smolensk Falls. Preference Falsification and the Hidden Fragility of Political Order

From Tacitus’s obsequium to Miłosz’s Persian-borrowed ketman and Havel’s greengrocer, political orders endure more by disciplined inattention, less by force. Preference falsification explains how societies sustain consensus no one truly believes.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Painter of Crowds, Contradictions and Concordia Discors.

Bruegel’s paintings are maps of collective life, crowded, contradictory, and held together by rhythm rather than agreement. Long before modern theory, he showed how societies endure without resolving their differences.

The (Un)bearable Heaviness of Freedom

Freedom becomes unbearable not when it is heavy, but when we pretend it should be light. By fleeing responsibility, exposure, and disagreement, liberal societies do not escape weight—they invite it back as fear, control, and dependence.

The Conflict Resolution Machine and the Human Remainder.

As AI enters conflict resolution, it promises coherence, scale, and calm. What it cannot resolve is the human remainder: agency, legitimacy, moral responsibility, and the right to remain in conflict without closure.

Religious Liberty: the Canary in the Mine of Conscience and Freedom

Religious liberty is the first freedom to falter when democracy’s air turns thin. Its decline signals not the triumph of tolerance, but rather a quiet suffocation of conscience—the moment when pluralism gives way to moral uniformity, and the soul itself falls under supervision.

A Pub Talk and an Ode to American Democracy

In a noisy pub back room, strangers argued, listened, and left thinking. No one won, no minds were remade. Yet something essential reappeared: the beauty of democracy, alive in the encounter and the simple dignity of talking across difference.

The Agony of the Fox. On Isaiah Berlin's Tragic Wisdom.

In a world that worships the Hedgehog’s certainty, Berlin’s Fox endures—wary, wounded, and free. His agony is the price of plurality: to see the many truths the Hedgehog denies, and to live among them without surrendering to one.

Faith in Collapse. Marx, the Politics of Doom, and Prudence as Antidote.

Apocalyptic politics, from Marx to recurrent historical doom, relieves us of responsibility by promising collapse as destiny. The antidote, as Burke and Aron knew, is prudence, the quiet art of governing without prophecy.

Deliberative AI, ‘Habermas Machines’ and Mediators

In a 2024 experiment, participants often preferred a language model’s account of their discussion. What happens when an institution starts treating that account as the group’s decision?

A Tale of Two Mayors. Mamdani, Polarizing Beliefs, and our hope for New York City

New York’s new mayor will have to embody two cities: one that dreams of justice, and another that counts the cost. Between compassion and competence lies the struggle that will define whether this age of belief becomes an age of folly.