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The article focuses on how secularism is perceived as the absence of religion. The author suggests that it should be given importance in contemporary discussions of religion and public life. He discusses the constitutional doctrines in France and in the U.S. and the root notion of the secular in contrast to eternity. He explores the start of the separation between religion and politics in the first century of the Christian era.

This article examines how privatization impacts a host of areas in the United States. The author asserts that the early twenty-first century has seen a concerted effort to limit public protections and to privatize risk. The author also discusses the effect of rolling back the public provision of public goods, and of restructuring public communications on the basis of private property rights rather than any broader conception of communicative rights. In addition, the author reveals that the state funding for some of America's greatest public universities has decreased to as low as eight percent of their costs.

The article presents the opinion of Craig Calhoun who is president of the Social Science Research Council and University Professor of Social Sciences at New York University, New York, New York (State), on the questions dealing with a constitutional crisis in the United States. The article further adds that U.S. President George W. Bush's administration has been more willing to sacrifice liberty than to provide security. Strengthening the coercive and surveillance powers of the state does not necessarily enhance security. For one thing, it makes citizens more vulnerable to abuses by government officials. Beyond this, massive use of computer assisted surveillance without serious legal safeguards makes citizens vulnerable to errors that are notoriously hard to correct, and to leaks and thefts of data that are notoriously hard to prevent.