THE AMERICAN EXPERIMENT: At 250, the Revolution’s goals remain noble and indispensable.

"A magazine, when properly conducted, is the nursery of genius; and by constantly accumulating new matter, becomes a kind of market for wit and utility.”

Thomas Paine made this (true) statement in 1775, in the first issue of The Pennsylvania Magazine, for which he served as editor. In this same manifesto, he had unkind words for the magazine’s older cousins. “The British magazines, at their commencement, were the repositories of ingenuity: They are now the retailers of tale and nonsense. From elegance they sunk to simplicity, from simplicity to folly, and from folly to voluptuousness.”

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