Gary Gregg proposed in “Vital Remnants” that we see the Founding as the Founders saw it, not as we wish them to have seen it. In this, Dr. Gregg went directly against the reigning historiography of the 1990s and its fetishist obsession with social justice, class, and gender. Twenty years ago the Intercollegiate Studies Institute [...]
William Branch Giles was not one of that galaxy of supremely great men produced by Virginia. But few Virginians have played a more stirring or independent part in so many varied positions in life, and none has surpassed him as a fighter in the public arena. William Branch Giles Among the Virginia [...]
To recapture a sense of the older notion of self-government, we need to go back to a time when Americans still maintained a clear conception of themselves as a people composed of individuals capable of self-government. The American revolution was the dramatic culmination of just such a moment. Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay [...]
Let us pause to reflect on the true significance of our founding. We should rightly celebrate the Declaration of Independence as a beginning of our political principles, not the final word. The grand document remains a fundamental American defense of diffused power that our leaders in Washington and the professorate cannot ignore. Today’s offering [...]
The need for understanding our roots is as timeless as the human story itself and explains why we cling to the Declaration of Independence. Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords our readers the opportunity to join Christopher Hammons, as he explores often-neglected facts about Independence Day. —W. Winston Elliott, Publisher Most people know [...]
The Declaration of Independence, intended as an expression of the common opinion, is truly a text of "right opinion," a benign practical text which also has a peculiarly sound relation to the realm of thought. Section I: The Legacy of the Declaration When American schoolchildren first discover that they have a place in the world they [...]
Why is the true Fourth such a powerful image of liberty? Because the things that most deepen us and rouse us are dangerous. An appetite for the real good means being willing to face danger, and the whole point of the liberty we celebrate is that we learn to handle danger, to face it [...]
The continued success of our nation is dependent upon a recovery of our appreciation of liberty, a return to the original division of government power as prescribed by the Constitution, and a renewal of personal responsibility for perpetuating the regime. As we celebrate American Independence, it is appropriate to reflect upon the foundations of [...]
Americans transcribed the Edenic myth and heralded the supremacy of the New World over the Old. Yet, many could not suppress the fear that they were already losing their sense of purity, innocence, and power, and would in time come face to face with the disappointments of history, the sorrows of the human condition, [...]
From Tertullian, a North African Christian writer of the early third century, to the Reformation, there is a significant Christian tradition that affirms religious freedom. Tertullian The origin story of religious liberty commonly cited in college courses and museums, informed by proponents of the so-called Whig view of history, goes something like [...]
Long after Barrett Wendell’s death, an elderly George Santayana remembered his former Harvard colleague fondly. “We were on the same side of the barricade.” Both he and Wendell loved the College with all its quirky traditions and sought to protect it from the academic innovations of President Charles Eliot. “We both desired to screen [...]
That we remember the Articles of Confederation poorly has far more to do with the ultimate success of American nationalists than it does with actual failure or success of the Articles themselves… Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords our readers the opportunity to join Bradley J. Birzer, as he reconsiders the legacy [...]
Philip Ludwell III is the first known convert to Eastern Orthodox Christianity in the Americas. He was a prominent figure in pre-revolutionary Virginia and a relative by blood or marriage of many great early figures in American history, from George Washington to Richard Henry Lee of the great Lee family of Virginia. The scion [...]
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 [...]