So much of the excellent work that people in my field have done in recent years to expand our geographic horizons has been heavily dependent on scholarship in other fields that began this work much earlier. Interdisciplinary research and even simply reading are truly transformative.

Greek & Roman historian here. Fact check: true. Ancient Mediterranean historians worth our salt don’t just read about Greeks and Romans.

Until recently, my academic field—political theory/history of ideas—had a ‘canon’ that cut out the *entire* first half of the record of human political thought. This ‘canon’ was arbitrarily drawn from 4 times and places *only*: (1) a single century in the ancient Aegean, almost all from Athens…

Democratizing “reconstruction” moments only happen in the US when the anti-democratization party is totally excluded (1865, 1932) or when the parties are *both* internally split on “race.” Neither is true in 2025. So what’s the path forward?

Until now, the basic structure of how the US Constitution "works" has been "refounded" 4 times. We are now *very* far into the 5th "refounding." Dr. McMillan Cottom is right. There is no easy path toward quickly & peacefully reversing this. Why? Let's look at the other "refounding" moments. (1/)

@jamellebouie.net's recent columns advance the view that the US Constitution extends far beyond the brief formal text & those informal & unwritten pieces are central to the character of the constitutional order. I just published an article detailing a similar view, but develop it a bit differently:

Now is a moment to reshare this video

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Sadly, these numbers will shift in reaction to any Iranian retaliation. US military casualties especially will produce a media frenzy for war. I’m old enough to remember 2003. This escalation was 100% elective, launched without evidence or argument, violating Article I of the US Constitution.

This is fascinating.

Looking forward to reading about Mesopotamian bureaucracy here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

🎯🧵"Beginning the history of political thought at the actual beginning (and not half-way through, as we usually do) opens up a whole new vista on the entire 5,000+ record of human political ideas. Crucially, it restores bureaucracy as a central theme of history of human political reflection."

Inaugurating Mesopotamian school of Political theory (obscured til now by philhellenism), calling for a proper focus on bureaucracy (elided til now because… slavery), noting the centrality of writing to labor, and vice versa, this (un)timely, frame-shifting essay is BIG. Bravo @dithomps.bsky.social

Delighted to see my article, "The Bureaucratic Origins of Political Theory," in print in @poppublicsphere.bsky.social. It is my favorite thing I've written, and I hope you'll read it. Like most people, I learned in school that political theory began in Athens in the 5th c. BCE. This is wrong. (1/)

Provoking domestic insurgency through unprofessional paramilitary violence then asking the highly professional US military to fight against their fellow citizens to protect the fake-military goons is a recipe for total collapse of military morale. bsky.app/profile/greg...

86 percent of the US population (almost 300 million people) live in metropolitan areas. To dominate them all militarily is impossible. www.census.gov/library/stor....

The LA metro area population (12.8 million) is larger than 45 US states. The LA metro area GDP ($1.3 trillion) is greater than all but 16 *nation-states*. Mobilizing a single infantry battalion and a loose collection of ARNG companies is a major constitutional escalation AND a sign of weakness.

Grading interrupted again by a friendly anole.

How am I supposed to finish grading with this beautiful visitor on my laptop?

A story in three parts about summer 2025, which will live in infamy…

He is risen in the polls.

Meh, I prefer the original... youtu.be/zYGSW7PGLVg?...

The best part is when she gesticulates toward the guy’s head with her muzzle.

He did not bend his neck

One upside to having 75% of Medicaid beneficiaries (~71 million people) receiving their benefits through a managed care company is that those managed care companies are big, powerful interests with similarly big economic stakes in making sure people understand these proposed cuts.

In retrospect, US education and media systems should have treated it as an emergency that millions of Americans had, for decades, become dissociated from the material reality that they really like what modern governments do. Will this break the dissociation? Is it too late?

There are millions of people alive today who directly and personally experienced one-party authoritarian rule in the United States. They have so much to teach us right now if we would only listen before it’s too late.

This is just wrong. As a resident of one of the fastest growing areas of the US (NE Richland Co, SC), I can tell you that the rapid expansion here is incredibly diverse and young. I grew up in suburban MA and live in exurban SC. Guess which place is more segregated (and it’s not even close)?

This was YEARS in the making but my first solo authored publication is out. I do more than rant on social media. I also study situational trust! www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

What is the philosophical basis of European integration? My former PhD student Alec Dinnin on Ortega y Gasset's support of European unification as a response to World War II and an antidote to democracy, now out in MIH www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

one in the storm drain outside my son’s college dorm this week…

This seems like an especially propitious time to cut science funding.

Occasional re-post. Constraining the executive to comply with the law is *central* to the separation of powers... and far from being self-enforcing, it's been under considerable strain for a long time before the current crisis. www.constitutionalstudies.ca/wp-content/u...

🤔

look on the bright side, folks. there is no chance one of elon's lackeys can touch a line of mainframe code without blowing up all federal payments.

RONALD REAGAN (1988): We should be aware of the demagogues who are ready to declare a trade war against our friends, weakening our economy, our national security, and the entire free world—all while cynically waving the American flag.

Wonderful thread on the pronunciation of numbers in Sumerian and Akkadian—and how we know. I can’t wait to read @moudhy.bsky.social’s forthcoming book, Between Two Rivers.

Great thread, with a bunch of pieces I teach in my 'political theory and public policy' class. Seems particularly relevant right now.

For much of European history (and elsewhere), gov’t treasuries were formally part of the king’s “household” administration. There was no formal separation between public administration/revenue and the family of the chief oligarch. This will be a return to that. Time is running out to stop it.

1. I agree 100%. And in addition to publicly accessible *descriptive* work on policy, there is also crucial unmet demand for accessible *normative* accounts of why the bureaucratic institutions that deliver the policies we need and like are good and democratically legitimate.

Me on January 1st Also me today on the 622nd day of January

One thing I’ll say as a Poli Sci prof. is that I hope this goes a good ways to resurface the submerged state.

If you’re worried about oligarchic state capture (as well you should be), and you want to know more about countervailing power that can fight it, then read my colleague @samuel-bagg.bsky.social’s excellent recent book about it: The Dispersion of Power. global.oup.com/academic/pro...

@paisleycurrah.com’s book is amazing! If you want to get a tangible sense of how fluid and changeable gov’t assignments of “sex” have been—sometimes by different agencies in the same jurisdiction—it’s a must-read.

Ezra Klein's most recent podcast correctly identifies that there's been a regime change in the US government, & he even uses a game metaphor at one point, but because he doesn't know about the multiple games framework, he flounders by falling into his default technocratic mode of analysis. (Thread)

One last day without the chaos...