You would never guess from the current campaign trail pyrotechnics, but public opinion polls suggest a straightforward formula for victory in the 2016 general election.

Michael Walzer’s name is associated with the summons to undertake social criticism that is engaged: that is, rooted in actual circumstances; cognizant of real people’s wants, needs, and desires; and respectful of the diversity of beliefs, practices, and forms of association by which groups of men and women organize their moral, political, and spiritual lives.

Pledging to spend more money on the military was once an easy way for Republican presidential candidates to showcase their conservative bona fides.

Sometimes a speech is just a speech. And sometimes it furnishes a window on a politician’s temperament and provides clarifying insight into how he understands political opponents, his office, and fellow citizens.

During his meteoric rise to the White House, President Obama was touted as a pragmatist -- one who overcomes ideology, transcends partisanship, and focuses on the practical and doable. The stunning repudiation of the president’s leadership on Nov. 4 exhibits the poverty of his brand of pragmatism.

Conservatives have enjoyed quite a comeback since the winter of 2009. But the inherent tension in the conservative imperative to blend liberty and tradition ensures that their path forward will be anything but certain.

Here are two interesting takes on free speech (or the lack thereof) on American college campuses. Jason L. Riley, a black conservative and Manhattan Institute senior fellow who often contributes to the Wall Street Journal, says he had an invitation to speak at Virginia Tech yanked.

The three-ring circus that is the 2016 presidential campaign features spellbinding performances worthy of the big top’s clowns, hucksters, and high-wire acts. A neglected cost of the Trump-Clinton-Sanders show, however, is the diversion of attention from the Obama administration’s cutting-edge assault on limited, constitutional government.

Bernie Sanders’ failed Democratic Party insurgency and Donald Trump’s hostile takeover of the Republican Party reflect a dangerous fissure that has opened between the people and the establishment.