The direction that constitutional practice has taken in the past hundred years shows that the Framers’ conception of republican government has passed and the era of populist democracy has arrived. The underlying transformation of the unwritten constitution renders efforts to return to the Framers’ original intent problematic. Much has been written in the past century [...]
The challenge for statesmen is to use historical experience as a guide to understanding civilization and then to reconstitute civilization in the specific circumstances of the day. Imagination is essential in the process of reconstitution because it is the human faculty that puts individuals in touch with what is possible. An Imaginative Whig: Reassessing the [...]
Eric Voegelin’s philosophical framework attempted to break down the ideological barriers to the search for order and the recovery of transcendent consciousness… Eric Voegelin’s work is not well known outside a relatively small group of academics and their students. Yet within this domain Voegelin’s influence is impressive. His work has inspired a growing secondary literature and [...]
Alexander Hamilton’s political theory grapples with the enduring questions of political order, and it marks the great achievement of American constitutionalism in its understanding that civilization depends on a realistic understanding of the human condition. Few would dispute that Alexander Hamilton influenced the development of American economic and political institutions and public policies in the [...]
Much has been written in the past century about the state of American constitutionalism and the political culture that serves as its animating force. Some scholars have argued that American constitutionalism has evolved so far from its founding principles that political practice today would be unrecognizable by the eighteenth-century Framers. These critics submit that the [...]
Russell Kirk understood that politics was determined by deep cultural and intellectual influences that included the arts, literature, philosophy, religion, and community life. In short, he believed that it was not by politics alone that American and Western civilization would be restored. A Critical Biography of a Conservative Mind by James E. Person, Jr. Russell [...]
Russell Kirk Defending tradition is a difficult task in an age that is predisposed to innovation and change. Yet that has been the challenge to conservatives in the modern age. Modernity inverts the conservative prejudice for prescriptive wisdom; it favors change and innovation as the instruments of progress; it places faith in what [...]
The sixty-year anniversary of The Conservative Mind is an opportunity to reflect on Russell Kirk’s achievement in shaping perceptions of conservatism. The book places conservatism in the larger tradition of Western civilization. It also connects it to particular thinkers who embodied the canons of conservatism Kirk describes in the first chapter. The canons intend to [...]
Democracy and Populism: Fear and Hatred, by John Lukacs. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005. 248 pp. There are few scholars whose intellectual achievements are so respected that their intuitions are as highly regarded as their more formal scholarship. John Lukacs is one of these rare individuals. He brings to his work a lifetime of devotion [...]
Because of its sober and realistic assumptions about human nature and the human condition, the American republic of the Constitution of 1789 is not designed to do the big things typical of empires. It is especially not designed to do that which has most characterized empire: conquer. When America does pursue empire, it undermines the [...]
Alexander Hamilton provided the early republic with firm and bold leadership. In justifying and explaining his political actions he articulated a theory of politics that has served as the foundation for one of the two central varieties of American constitutionalism. Few would dispute that Alexander Hamilton influenced the development of American economic and political institutions [...]
Conservatism Revisited: The Revolt Against Ideology, by Peter Viereck. With a major new study of Peter Viereck and Conservatism by Claes G. Ryn Developments in recent American politics have raised questions about the intellectual roots and philosophical depth of conservatism. The direction of American foreign policy, for example, has inspired debates about the meaning of American [...]