About John Willson

John Willson is a Senior Contributor at The Imaginative Conservative. He is professor of history emeritus, Hillsdale College. His work has been published in Modern Age, Imprimis, and the University Bookman, and he contributed to Reflections on the French Revolution. Dr. Willson is past President of the Philadelphia Society.

Misuse of a Metaphor: In Search of the City on a Hill

By |2014-01-07T09:07:40-06:00September 7th, 2012|Categories: Books, John Willson|Tags: |

A review of Richard M. Gamble, In Search of the City on a Hill: The Making and Unmaking of an American Myth. New York: Continuum/Bloomsbury Academic, 2012. Mythology, n. The body of a primitive people’s beliefs concerning its origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished from the true accounts which it invents [...]

All Right There Are Two Nations

By |2014-01-06T11:49:02-06:00July 7th, 2012|Categories: Culture, John Willson|

 (This is for Brad Birzer, who threatened to be cranky.) Just after the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti in 1927, the novelist John Dos Passos said, “All right we are two nations.”  Dos Passos was still a socialist America hater at the time, and seemed to represent the future in a year that Calvin Coolidge, [...]

Gladiators

By |2014-01-06T11:42:44-06:00July 3rd, 2012|Categories: Culture, Film, John Willson, Sports|

A couple of nerds, one of them a wannabe jock, have been making minor headlines in such classy publications as Slate, running the old “let’s ban college football” canard up the flagpole. Malcolm Gladwell and Buzz Bissinger, supposedly well-known writers (but, thankfully, ones I had never before heard of) “won” a debate against former NFL [...]

Mexico Way

By |2014-02-10T17:12:25-06:00April 28th, 2012|Categories: Books, John Willson|

Mexico Way (by Chilton Williamson, Jr.; Chronicles Press, 2008) This is a way cool novel, as several of my grand daughters would say. Chilton Williamson, Jr. who grew up in the wilds of New York City and after many missed steps found himself to be a cowboy, is one of the best writers that too [...]

Liberal Learning and Testing for (PC) Truth

By |2013-12-26T22:31:35-06:00April 12th, 2012|Categories: Education, John Willson, Liberal Learning|

Idiot, n.  A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling.  The Idiot’s activity is not confined to any special field of thought or action, but ‘pervades and regulates the whole.’  He has the last word in everything; his decision is unappealable.  He sets the fashion of opinion and [...]

Religious Liberty in America: The Rev. Dr. John Witherspoon

By |2017-07-12T23:20:04-05:00March 21st, 2012|Categories: American Republic, Featured, Freedom of Religion, John Willson, John Witherspoon|

This is adapted from my 1993 short book, John Witherspoon and the Presbyterian Constitution. It is intended to tell part of the story of the early American understanding of religious liberty, and to leave to the reader its bearing upon the current controversy, so utterly wrongly pictured by many as a “Catholic” issue or one [...]

Rush: “Hightail it!”

By |2014-01-06T12:32:53-06:00March 15th, 2012|Categories: Conservatism, John Willson|

Hypocrite, n.  One who, professing virtues that he does not respect, secures the advantage of seeming to be what he despises.–Ambrose Bierce I’ve wondered, from time to time, what parents may have been thinking to name a son “Rush.” A few of my New England ancestors adopted hortatory names–”Small-Hope Biggs,” “Safely-on-High Snatt,” or my favorite, as [...]

Latter Day President: Mormon Romney

By |2016-05-20T11:34:09-05:00February 3rd, 2012|Categories: Mitt Romney, Politics|

Willard Romney is a devoted member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, by his own admission and the testimony of those who know him. He went to Brigham Young University as a dutiful son should, and later to Harvard to get his secular credentials; he did his mission in France, a [...]

The Declaration and the Constitution: Beauty and the Beholder

By |2016-10-23T10:30:28-05:00December 26th, 2011|Categories: American Founding, Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Featured, John Willson, Politics|

Beauty, n.  The power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband. –Ambrose Bierce My Imprimis arrived today.  It is “The Unity and Beauty of the Declaration and the Constitution,” an interview of Dr. Larry Arnn, President of Hillsdale College, by Peter Robinson of the Hoover Institution.  The full interview can be viewed here.  It is a remarkable [...]

Freedom Betrayed, Again and Again

By |2014-01-09T20:02:08-06:00December 18th, 2011|Categories: Books, George Nash, John Willson, Politics|Tags: |

Most of the readers of this site know by now that one of the truly great historians of my generation (people born 1933-46, the “no-name” generation), George H. Nash, has recently published Freedom Betrayed: Herbert Hoover’s Secret History of the Second World War and Its Aftermath (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2011). Every conservative has held [...]

The Newest Deal

By |2014-01-06T13:02:54-06:00December 9th, 2011|Categories: John Willson, Politics|

I try to think about interesting things as often as I can, so I don’t pay much attention to American politics.  Except when I need a good laugh.  Our Imperial Leader gave us one the other day by flying off to Osawatomie, Kansas, to beat up on the Wall Street guys and gals who are [...]

Go to Top