Freedom is Fragile, Pluralism is Precious | Bridging Polarization Across Politics, Tech, and Civic Life
Conscience
How a young Poleâorphan, laborer, actor, priestâarmed his conscience with verse and learned to defend human freedom from Nazism, Communism, and our age of noise. In brutal times it is easy to think culture is a luxury. Karol WojtyĹa (1920â2005) knew better. Before he became John Paul
Breaking with Marx
From Party prodigy to dissident sage, KoĹakowskiâs journey shows how the courage to doubt can be freedomâs deepest defense. Leszek KoĹakowski (1927â2009) lived a life that could be read as the intellectual autobiography of the twentieth century itself: born in the ruins of war, drawn into Marxist
Breaking with Marx
How one of the 20th centuryâs most radical philosophers abandoned Marxist utopianism for Aristotelian tradition and Thomistic faith. "I can only answer the question âWhat am I to do?â if I can answer the prior question âOf what story or stories do I find myself a part?"
How the âtyranny of the majorityâ has migrated into our online public squares Tocquevilleâs Tyranny of the Majority in the Digital Age When Alexis de Tocqueville published Democracy in America (1835), he warned of a new kind of despotism. The danger was not kings or emperors but the collective
Conscience
HammarskjĂśldâs Markings shows that true leadership is rooted in humility, integrity, and service. His legacy reminds us that moral authority flows not from power, but from the courage to surrender self for others.
Faith and Reason
How a 12th-century dialogue between two great Muslim thinkers continues to shape the regionâs choices today. A Debate That Still Resonates In the late eleventh century, the great theologian Abu Hamid al-Ghazali published TahÄfut al-FalÄsifa (The Incoherence of the Philosophers). It was a masterful critique of those who, influenced
Freedom
Boaz reminds us liberty is not a bunker but a port cityâconfident, cosmopolitan, and outward-facing. Peace, trade, and humility in power are its pillars; connection, not coercion, is its compass.
Poetry
A Romani poetâs fragile liberty, carried into Polish lettersâand into our present arguments about memory, dignity, and belonging BronisĹawa Wajsâknown as Papusza (âDollâ)âentered Polish literature from the forest edge. A self-taught singer from a traveling kumpania of the Polska Roma, she would become the first widely
Faith and Reason
Catholic teaching defends conscience not as relativism but as libertyâs foundation: truth can only be embraced freely. Liberty makes room for truth; truth gives liberty its purpose.
Conscience
Borodinâs Partings maps not prison camps but the inner gulagâconsciences dulled by compromise, truths traded for comfort. Paired with Solzhenitsynâs thunder, his whisper warns: freedom is lost first in silence.
Moral Courage
Alexander Solzhenitsyn remains one of the towering moral witnesses of the twentieth century. A soldier, prisoner, writer, and prophet, he lived through the worst that the totalitarian state could inflict, and yet refused to bow his soul to it. What distinguished him was not only his suffering but the clarity
Foreign Affairs
Isaiah Berlin and Leszek KoĹakowski offer a blueprint: Only inclusive, pluralist statecraftânot imposed powerâcan bring Syria back from the brink. The international community must insist on it.