This Bicentennial issue of The Public Interest also marks the magazine's 10th anniversary of publication, so we feel it to be a very special issue indeed. Whether or not it has special merit, we leave it to our readers to decide. But it certainly is special in size and also distinctive in its focus on issues of political philosophy, as against our usual focus on questions of social policy. This shift in focus would seem appropriate to the occasion. Whatever the costs or benefits of particular social policies, it is on fundamental issues of political philosophy that the American republic is likely to stand or fall.