In the Wall Street Journal‘s weekend interview, Sohrab Ahmari sat down with Harvey Mansfield, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Government at Harvard University, to discuss the “crisis of American self-government.” This year marks Mansfield’s fiftieth year teaching politics and political theory at Harvard, where he has authored such books on government and democracy as Spirit of Liberalism (1978), Taming the Prince: The Ambivalence of Modern Executive Power (1993), America’s Constitutional Soul (1993), and a new translation of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (2000).

Here are some upcoming AEI events in the Washington, D.C. area that might be of interest to our citizenship readers. Hope to see you there!

At a Program on American Citizenship event at AEI on Wednesday, AEI’s Nicholas Eberstadt demonstrated how government entitlement spending has dramatically increased over the past 50 years –with nearly half of U.S. households receiving some sort of government benefit–and explored the implications of this trend for a self-governing citizenry.

America’s national debt now exceeds $15 trillion, which is roughly equal to the value of all goods and services the U.S. economy produces in one year. If left unchecked, America’s debt will have catastrophic consequences for the future of the nation. How did we arrive at this point?

In a piece that is timely for our upcoming Nation of Takers event on Wednesday at AEI (register here), panelist Jay Cost (Weekly Standard) writes in National Affairs about “the politics of loss.”

America’s national debt now exceeds $15 trillion, which is roughly equal to the value of all goods and services the U.S. economy produces in one year. If left unchecked, America’s debt will have catastrophic consequences for the future of the nation. How did we arrive at this point?