In Praise of a Disunited States of America

The Nation Could Use More Declarations of Independence, and California Should Take the Lead

The further I drove into Oroville, the more disappointment I felt.

I had my passport with me, but no one asked me to show it. American flags still hung from stores along Montgomery Street. Homes near the Feather River were flying our state’s banner. City Hall had not been replaced by a new national capitol. And as hard as I looked, I could find no new standing army, or presidential palace, or the Oroville Food and Drug Administration.

It was as if the city council of Oroville, 70 miles north of Sacramento …

Carmel’s Cautionary Tale for Post-Roe America | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

Carmel’s Cautionary Tale for Post-Roe America

Poet Nora May French’s Account of Her 1907 Abortion Is an Infuriating Read—and a Sobering Reminder of What History Omits

I am no longer able to think of Carmel without thinking of abortion and Nora May French.

For this new habit of mind, I blame two things: the U.S. Supreme Court, …

Heather McGhee Offers a New Story of American Solidarity

The 2022 Zócalo Book Prize Winner Sees Hope Beyond America’s ‘Zero-Sum’ Mindset

The 2022 Zócalo Public Square Book Prize event’s return to in-person programming for the first time in three years—and the hopeful chord struck by the winning author—arrived at the ASU …

Why the Western Remains ‘One of Our Most Powerful Cinematic Inventions’ | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

Why the Western Remains ‘One of Our Most Powerful Cinematic Inventions’

From The Searchers to The Power of the Dog, Troubled Protagonists Offer an American Vision of Death and Defeat

Robert Warshow, a tall, wry, chain-smoking New Yorker and an editor at Commentary magazine in the early 1950s, was obsessed with movies, comic books, and other forms of popular culture …

Can the American Republic Survive the Stubbornness of San Francisco? | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

Can the American Republic Survive the Stubbornness of San Francisco?

The City by the Bay Keeps Producing Leaders Who Won't Quit—Even When They Should

San Francisco stubbornness is holding the republic hostage.

The hostage takers are two of California’s oldest and most powerful mules. U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer …

How ‘Automation’ Made America Work Harder | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

How ‘Automation’ Made America Work Harder

Computers Were Supposed to Reduce Office Labor. They Accomplished the Opposite

The world confronts “an epochal transition.” Or so the consulting firm McKinsey and Company crowed in 2018, in an article accompanying a glossy 141-page report on the automation revolution. Over …