The rally on August 28 in Washington, D.C., was about many things—some high, a few low (very few, as these events go), and many in-between, and is worth considering from various angles, from the political to the cultural to the sociological. We offer two excellent analyses in the following pages, by Harvey Mansfield and Lee Harris.

President Obama sure did cover a lot of ground last week in his address to the nation announcing the end of combat operations in Iraq. At times the speech resembled one of those late-night, beer-fueled freshman dorm bull sessions, where you start off discussing Led Zeppelin and end up ten hours later debating the ontological principle.

Lively debate continues about just how many people showed up to attend Glenn Beck’s rally at the Lincoln Memorial, but there has been less interest in exactly why they showed up.