This essay from Michael Knox Beran is among the more incisive reflections I have recently read on politics, especially within the constraints of the American regime. Beran argues that both right and left get Franklin Roosevelt wrong: FDR was less radical and more cautious than is generally believed. Beran captures the essential challenge of the statesman: In a moment of crisis, he or she must act without definitive sense of what the correct action is or what all its consequences may be. Beran suggests that Roosevelt read the “temper of the country” better than some later scholars have claimed: The … Continue reading Tory Pragmatism