American History on the Banks of the Potomac

By |2024-03-13T16:45:58-05:00March 13th, 2024|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Bradley J. Birzer, History, Timeless Essays|

Across the mighty Potomac sits the capital of our once noble and humane republic, founded upon the idea that all men are created equal, endowed with the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. What do the women and men who occupy the innumerable office buildings on either of the Potomac think about [...]

Liberals and the Libel of “Christian Nationalism”

By |2024-03-07T18:56:33-06:00March 7th, 2024|Categories: American Republic, Christianity, Civil Society, Civilization, Liberalism|

Christ gave His disciples the Divine Commission to go and teach all nations, baptizing them. Christians are called to change society—all society, every society. They pursue this goal with charity and zeal, respecting the free will of individuals. Wherever Christianity has gone, its charity has transformed nations and peoples. Whenever the extreme left is in [...]

The Landmark Decision of “Dred Scott v. Sandford”

By |2024-03-05T19:53:23-06:00March 5th, 2024|Categories: American Republic, Congress, Constitution, Politics, Slavery, Supreme Court|

“Dred Scott” is a landmark decision because it answered questions regarding slavery that the Supreme Court had not previously addressed. It is also one of the most infamous decisions, furthering the great divide facing the nation regarding the question of slavery and moving the country further down the path toward the Civil War. Dred Scott [...]

The Articles of Confederation and State Sovereignty

By |2024-03-01T05:39:55-06:00February 29th, 2024|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Featured, Founding Document, History, Nationalism, Timeless Essays|

Article II of the Articles of Confederation codified that one of the purposes of the American Revolution was the protection of state sovereignty, by making state sovereignty a fundamental aspect of the American constitutional order. The American Revolution, State Sovereignty, and the American Constitutional Settlement, 1765-1800 by N. Coleman (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016) The [...]

“A Heart Devoted to the Welfare of Our Country”

By |2024-02-22T19:34:49-06:00February 22nd, 2024|Categories: American Republic, Constitution, John Quincy Adams, Timeless Essays|

It is a source of gratification and of encouragement to me to observe that the great result of this experiment upon the theory of human rights has, at the close of that generation by which it was formed, been crowned with success equal to the most sanguine expectations of its founders. The following is John [...]

George Washington and the “Gift of Silence”

By |2024-02-22T05:51:49-06:00February 21st, 2024|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, George Washington, Leadership, Stephen M. Klugewicz, Timeless Essays|

George Washington, the great actor, was playing his part in a great drama, not just for Americans of his day, but for you and me. Washington, the Stoic, used his “gift of silence” shrewdly, and surely it is his actions more than his words that echo down to us today. In December 2009, a letter [...]

Keeping Asian-Americans in Their Place

By |2024-02-22T05:58:52-06:00February 21st, 2024|Categories: American Republic, Education, Joseph Mussomeli, Liberalism, Politics, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays|

We should not try to right one historic wrong by committing a new one. After enduring over a century of white racism, now the Asian-American community must cope with a more subtle but just as sinister form of liberal racism: the harsh Orwellian reality that in modern America all minorities are equal, but some minorities [...]

The “Genuine Information”: A Warning About the Constitution

By |2024-02-19T18:36:59-06:00February 19th, 2024|Categories: American Founding, Constitution, Featured, Timeless Essays|

The time may come when it shall be the duty of a State, in order to preserve itself from the oppression of the general government, to have recourse to the sword—In which case the proposed form of government declares that the State and every of its citizens who act under its authority are guilty of [...]

Should We Celebrate Presidents’ Day, or Washington’s Birthday?

By |2024-02-18T16:09:00-06:00February 18th, 2024|Categories: American Republic, Constitution, George Washington, Gleaves Whitney, Presidency, Timeless Essays|

People ask why a few of us presidential junkies would like to see Presidents’ Day changed back to Washington’s Birthday. The technical explanation has to do with a misguided law called HR 15951 that was passed in 1968 to make federal holidays less complicated. The real answer is simply this: George Washington is our greatest [...]

Why National Divorce Is a Horrible Idea

By |2024-02-16T14:41:09-06:00February 15th, 2024|Categories: American Republic, John Horvat|

America must turn to that family-centered, community-based society that is anchored in God and a morality based on His law. Now is the time to gather the nation around unifying principles, not shatter it into millions of individualistic shards. Some traditional-minded Americans use a horrible metaphor to describe an outcome they desire for the nation. [...]

James Otis, Then and Now

By |2024-02-05T18:35:10-06:00February 4th, 2024|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Bradley J. Birzer, History, Politics, Rights, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays|

Going back to the first principles of the Founding, one finds that the Founders talked unceasingly about rights. Rights language became a critical part of the cultural landscape when James Otis delivered his oration on the nature of rights, the common law, and the natural law. Feel free to call me a conservative (I won’t [...]

Thomas Jefferson and “A Little Rebellion Now and Then”

By |2024-01-24T16:59:23-06:00January 24th, 2024|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Clyde Wilson, Republicanism, Thomas Jefferson, Timeless Essays|

Nowhere to be seen now are the old Jeffersonians, once a major American type, rebellious men who dared defend the rights of themselves and their communities from outside impositions. But buried somewhere deep in the American soul is a tiny ember of Jeffersonian democracy that now and then gives off an uncertain, feeble, and futile [...]

Intrascendence, Myth, & the Southern Agrarian Legacy

By |2024-01-10T19:08:48-06:00January 10th, 2024|Categories: Agrarianism, Allen Tate, American Republic, Books, South|

There is more to Southern life than moonlight and magnolia. It presumed, in fact, an affection for the literal world justified by its origin, history, and destiny, infused with its own providentially given meaning and value. It was not a perfect society, to be sure. But it had at its core something which deserves respect. [...]

Christopher Lasch on the Elites’ Betrayal of Democracy

By |2024-01-09T18:06:27-06:00January 9th, 2024|Categories: American Republic, Books, Community, Liberalism, Politics, Populism|

Though a self-described "man of the left," Christopher Lasch was once and always a populist. By the end of his life, he was concerned with the rise to power of American elites who, as of the mid-1990s, were already alien to—and divorced from—the masses of ordinary American citizens. The Revolt of the Elites and the [...]

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