Did Christian Societies Actually Outperform? — the Great Divergence is recent (Christendom a backwater vs. Islam/China until ~1500); Christianity constant across both eras so not the explanans; HRE success ran on fragmentation; modern fertility collapse hits all creeds
Chiafalo v. Washington — Binding the Electors — the founding-era elector debate (Hamilton’s Federalist 68 vs. Mason/Anti-Fed 72), Ray v. Blair (1952) + Jackson’s dissent, and the pre-17th-Amendment doctrine of instruction
Originalism and the Limiting Document — Marbury’s oath argument, Federalist 84 + the 9th/10th Amendments, Spooner on consent, and Justice Jackson across Wickard/Ray/Youngstown
Cyclical Historians — Ibn Khaldun, Spengler, Toynbee, Strauss & Howe, Glubb — those who see civilizations following predictable patterns of rise and fall.
Eastern Logical Traditions — The convergence proof: independent civilizations, no contact, same structural insights — centuries before the West caught up.
The Unreplaced Event — Why the West Still Runs on World War II — WWII as the post-war West’s foundational frame; persistence, the total-state-stored-as-nationalism mis-encoding, grudges as maintained structures (Korea armistice, China’s Century of Humiliation), and the drain of the apocalyptic decline-prophecy
Jake the Lawyer — 17th Amendment — Progressive Era history: the Gilded Age origins, the 1893–1908 failed direct-election amendments, the Oregon system, Hearst and The Treason of the Senate, and the 16th+17th foundation of the administrative state
The Represented Unit — the Connecticut Compromise as bargained-for consideration; exit lost 1865, voice lost 1913; the 14th as the bridge
Administrative Agencies and the Power to Execute — the arc from Humphrey’s Executor (1935) through Seila (2020), Loper Bright (2024), and Trump v. Slaughter (2026, overruling Humphrey’s); the administrative state as the downstream chapter of the 16th+17th
The Industrial Revolution and the Remaking of Political Order — Hobsbawm’s dual revolution (1789–1848); the interwar democratic-breakdown record (4 of 12 W. European democracies fell; democratic youth not economic severity was decisive); Bismarck/Fabian/Progressive administrative-state origins; Wilson/Goodnow 1887/1900
Arithmetic Scarcity and the 3D Problem — three decades of fast arithmetic sold as an option box: PDP-8 EAE (1965) → PDP-11 EIS (unavailable/optional/standard across one product line) → 8087 (1980) → 80486DX integration (1989)
Arithmetic as a Purchase — Sixty Years of Paying for Multiply — the invoice exists: IBM 1401 multiply/divide at $325/month, the 1620 with no ALU at all, S/360 floating point as a model-tier checkbox, the CDC 6600’s ten functional units; then aerospace, the 8-bit regression, and the cartridge coprocessor