"The Hollow Republic"

I enjoyed this essay, "The Hollow Republic", by Yuval Levin.  In Catholic Social Thought, "mediating associations" are not, as some theorists have thought, "worms in the entrails of the body politic", nor are they merely vehicles for individuals' projects.  They are real, they are appropriate subjects of rights, and they are essential to constitutionalism, correctly understood.  As Levin notes, "[t]o ignore what stands between the state and the citizen is to disregard the essence of American life. To clear away what stands between the state and the citizen is to extinguish the sources of American freedom."