Author / Luke Voyles

Luke Voyles '18 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at lrvoyles@wustl.edu.
    Loading posts...
  • The Trinitarian Streak: Religious Orthodoxy and the American Presidency

    For the past 104 years, the chief executive of the United States has been a Trinitarian Christian. 1. I would like to show how American presidents have become more religiously orthodox. 2. I would like to explore various explanations as to why American presidents have embraced orthodoxy. When William Howard Taft is remembered, it is…

  • The Greatest Supreme Court Justice

    Justice Byron White does not have an excellent reputation among legal scholars or among the general public. Conservatives do not usually remember White too fondly because of his liberal rulings, and he is usually not particularly beloved by liberals because of his conservative rulings. When noted Yale law professor Robert M. Cover wrote his famous…

  • The Chancellor Bows Out

    On September 6, 2017, Mark Wrighton announced his imminent retirement as the chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis. He expressed that he wanted a “transition” as he approached the age of 70. He began his service at Washington University in St. Louis in 1995, at the tender age of 46. Only his immediate predecessor…

  • Age Never Matters

    Commentators have a habit of describing a certain generation of people as sharing common characteristics by placing them in the same generational set. For example, people in their 20s and younger are known as millennials. The commentators called people born between 1946 and 1964 “baby boomers,” and people of a later generation “Generation X.” Critics…

  • “We The People” Can Change

    In 1932, 102,221 citizens of a certain nation vot­ed for the Communist Party in their country’s presidential debate. In 1948, two governors of the same country’s administrative municipali­ties ran on a ticket of oppression and apartheid for the nation’s racial minority. They gained all of the electoral votes of four of their nation’s main divisions.…

  • It Will Be All Right

    The 2016 presidential election may have been the most contentious election in recent history.  Political adherents of both the Left and the Right frequently bashed the morality of the candidate from the other party. I was not isolated from the conflict as the vast majority of my family despised both candidates, but mostly preferred Donald…

  • Authoritarianism and the “Pink Tide”

    During the 21st century, popular elections brought many left-wing governments into power in Latin America in a movement known popularly as the “Pink Tide.” The movement rose up in 1999 in response to the demise of decades-long, right-wing governments that were supported by the United States, and gained ground because of popular disillusionment with the…