Curated playlist
Political philosophy
- TotalitarianismTotalitarianism is a word that began as an insult, became a battle cry, and ended up contested by the very scholars who once wielded it most confidently. When Benito Mussolini declared "Everything within the state, nothing outside the…
- Freedom of speechFreedom of speech is a principle that asks something radical of us: to defend the right to say things we find wrong, offensive, or dangerous. In 1906, a biographer named Evelyn Beatrice Hall captured this tension in a single sentence she…
- Political philosophyPolitical philosophy asks the hardest questions human beings have ever tried to answer. What gives a government the right to rule? When is a law unjust? What do people owe each other, and what does society owe them? These are not merely…
- RepublicanismRepublicanism is a political ideology built on a radical premise: that sovereignty belongs to the people, not to a king, a dynasty, or a divine right. The word itself traces to the Latin res publica, meaning "public thing," a phrase coined…
- SecularismSecularism, in 1851, did not yet have a name. In Britain that year, a writer reaching for an alternative to a word he found too aggravating settled on a new one. He wanted to describe a way of conducting life based on naturalistic…
- Social democracySocial democracy sits in an odd place. It is a broad, centre-left ideology inside the wider socialist movement, yet in modern practice it runs a predominantly capitalist economy. The trick is the welfare state attached to that economy.…
- WhiggismWhiggism began not in a philosopher's study but in the chaos of civil war. When Parliament and King Charles I went to war in the English Civil Wars of the seventeenth century, something new was forged in the conflict. A political…
- Dignitas (Roman concept)Dignitas, a Latin word from ancient Rome, had no clean translation in English. Not dignity alone, not prestige, not charisma. It was all of these things at once, and something more. The Oxford Latin Dictionary needed a dozen words just to…
- Redistribution of income and wealthRedistribution of income and wealth is, at its core, the transfer of income and wealth from some individuals to others through mechanisms a society has agreed upon: taxation, welfare programs, public services, land reform, monetary policy,…
- Divine right of kingsIn the year 1170, Archbishop Thomas Becket died after being murdered by knights loyal to King Henry II of England. This violent event marked a turning point in how European rulers understood their power and accountability. Before this…
- ImperiumImperium was the word ancient Romans used for the kind of power that could not be argued with. It came from imperare, the Latin verb meaning to command, and in its oldest form it described something close to kingly authority. The listener…