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!

Writing in The Wall Street Journal‘s “Saturday Essay,” AEI’s Nicholas Eberstadt raises the question of what will happen to the American character as the United States increasingly becomes “a nation of takers.”

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.

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?