John Randolph of Roanoke, one of the great exponents of the Southern political tradition, knew that what was proper to any state government was the preservation of the received order. The duty of the citizen of the commonwealth was to resist any legislative or constitutional changes to the received order, and to grant a broad [...]
In “The Reactionary Imperative,” Mel Bradford calls for a return to the roots of American order. Sadly, a return to a revised form of the Articles of Confederation is all but impossible. Hope, however, lies in a revivification of the principles of the Old Republicans of Thomas Jefferson’s day. Mel Bradford published a collection of [...]
The governor of West Virginia has invited the disaffected counties of Virginia to leave the Old Dominion and become a part of the mountain state. The loss of these counties and their “deplorables” would mark an end to what little is left of the Old Dominion’s influence in the counsels of the nation. The American [...]
The plan for government that came from the Philadelphia convention was what Patrick Henry referred to as a beautiful butterfly with “poison under its wings.” The parchment barriers erected against monarchy and consolidation, he held, would only be as effective as the force backing them. The beginning of the American political order goes much further [...]