About Bruce Frohnen

Bruce P. Frohnen is Professor of Law at Ohio Northern University College of Law and the author of Virtue and the Promise of Conservatism: The Legacy of Burke and Tocqueville, The New Communitarians and The Crisis of Modern Liberalism and editor (with George Carey) of Community and Tradition: Conservative Perspectives on the American Experience. His latest book is Constitutional Morality and the Rise of Quasi-Law (written with the late George Carey).

Say it ain’t so, Stan!: A Female Thor

By |2014-12-29T14:01:30-06:00July 21st, 2014|Categories: Bruce Frohnen, Culture, Feminism, Film|

Marvel Comics has announced that its superhero Thor—you know, the Norse god?—is getting a sex change. Well, not exactly. First off, it is no longer Marvel Comics, it is Disney’s Marvel Comics. Which obviously explains a lot, here. The House of Mouse decided years ago that it would be happy to be the House of [...]

Hard Truths About Class in America

By |2014-12-29T14:03:45-06:00July 16th, 2014|Categories: Barack Obama, Bruce Frohnen, Government|

In a recent post at The Daily Beast, Joel Kotkin, who teaches and writes mostly about urban affairs, demonstrates his uncanny ability to spot wide socio-economic trends and their implications. Not himself a conservative, Mr. Kotkin nonetheless lays out in this post, a teaser for a forthcoming book, The New Class Conflict, the deeply conservative fact [...]

Impeachment: Our Lost Check on Power

By |2014-12-29T14:05:30-06:00July 10th, 2014|Categories: Barack Obama, Bruce Frohnen, Congress, Government, Supreme Court|

So now Sarah Palin has called for President Barack Obama’s impeachment. The response from the New York Times and other representatives of the “mainstream” media no doubt will be a combination of derision and studied indifference. And this should not surprise anyone. Unless an almost-literal smoking gun magically appears showing beyond a shadow of a [...]

Education: The Problem with “Accountability”

By |2020-02-26T12:52:24-06:00July 7th, 2014|Categories: Bruce Frohnen, Education, Featured, Leadership|

Recent stories concerning the sorry state of American education have focused on problems with the new “Common Core” public school curriculum and retention of clearly incompetent teachers. As a parent who long ago rejected our public school system, these seem to me to be mere symptoms of a much deeper and more critical (one might [...]

The Hobby Lobby Case: Good News, Not Great News

By |2014-12-29T14:09:56-06:00July 1st, 2014|Categories: Barack Obama, Bruce Frohnen, Politics, Religion, Supreme Court|

Many religious folk have been rejoicing at the Supreme Court’s recent 5-4 decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, the case concerning the Obama Administration’s attempt to force Hobby Lobby and other religious businesses to pay for contraceptive and abortifacient drugs for their employees under the Health and Human Services Mandate. The Court held that the [...]

Why We Are Arguing About Religion

By |2014-12-29T14:12:48-06:00June 22nd, 2014|Categories: Bruce Frohnen, Culture, Religion, Secularism|

Most of us have been told from a young age that religious beliefs cause strife. The early modern “wars of religion” are portrayed as merely the most overt form of what happens when religion is allowed too much influence in public life. Of course, Protestant and Catholic forces fought on both sides of these conflicts. [...]

Malevolent? … No. … Maleficent? … Whatever

By |2014-12-29T14:14:13-06:00June 16th, 2014|Categories: Bruce Frohnen, Culture, Film|

“Fractured” fairy tales have a long history in American popular culture. Jay Ward was noted for a segment with precisely that title in his Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon shows. Even in the small doses provided by Ward, fairy stories stripped of their original drama with winks, nods, popular references and, of course, colloquial language, came [...]

Steve Jobs: The Spoiled Child as Tech Guru

By |2021-02-23T14:55:32-06:00June 4th, 2014|Categories: Bruce Frohnen, Culture, Steve Jobs, Technology|

What Steve Jobs “sold” with his Apple devices was the myth of control, of importance, and of connection through technology. In truth, the vast bulk of what these personal devices offer constitutes a massive waste of time—and, worse, a diversion from genuine interaction with actual people, or nature, or our own minds. Redesigning the World [...]

“Operation Choke Point:” Eric Holder’s Latest Attack on the Rule of Law

By |2014-12-29T14:21:40-06:00May 29th, 2014|Categories: Bruce Frohnen, Government, Justice, Morality, Politics|

I admit to being rather pleased when I first read that a number of “actors” in pornographic films had been told by their banks that their business was no longer welcome. It seems the banks had determined that such persons posed a “reputation risk.” Too distracted by other things to pay much attention, I assumed [...]

Steve Jobs, Spoiled Child: Why It Matters

By |2021-02-23T14:53:12-06:00May 21st, 2014|Categories: Bruce Frohnen, Steve Jobs|

What are we to make of this powerful, contradictory figure and his influence on our society? Origins A decade after his death from cancer, Steve Jobs remains an icon of contemporary business and popular culture. Co-founder of Apple, he amassed a fortune of mammoth proportions and built the most highly valued corporation in the world. [...]

Federal Liberty: The Importance of the Dutch Example

By |2020-01-09T11:49:10-06:00May 13th, 2014|Categories: Bruce Frohnen, Government, Monarchy, Religion|

Conservatives to a significant degree are defined by their respect for historical origins. In the American context this has meant recognizing the importance of a tradition with its roots in England, but also further back, and further East. To put it in terms reminiscent of Russell Kirk, the religion of Jerusalem, the philosophy of Athens, [...]

Thomas Piketty, Economic Inequality, and the Hypocrisy of Power

By |2014-12-29T14:34:05-06:00May 7th, 2014|Categories: Bruce Frohnen, Economics, Equality, Politics|

That a French socialist economist is trashing the American economy for fomenting inequality should hardly be news. But Thomas Piketty is enjoying some moments in the popular press, before returning to the usual comfortable sinecure for the left—academia. Why? Well, we are told, economic inequality is on the march again, and must be stopped. Stopped [...]

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