In the process of taming the wilderness of the New World by violent means, Americans absorbed and bequeathed to future generations some of the savagery that they determined to eliminate. Their purpose was to establish and maintain a civilization, but we have now lost this sense of purpose. Savagery is the product, then, not of [...]
The right to bear arms protects every other right. Without its preservation, a nation would easily succumb to tyranny. As long as this right is upheld, protected, and exercised lawfully, the torch of liberty may continue to burn. “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a Free State, the right of the people [...]
There is something uniquely awful about children getting gunned down. But in terms of school security, the good news is that we are still free enough to use existing laws and institutions to experiment in states and local communities, in government and private schools, to see what works… One principle that should unite all serious [...]
Americans historically have not just believed in the “right” to bear arms, but they have, more importantly, claimed an actual republican duty of all Americans to bear arms. Every two years at Hillsdale College, I have the immense privilege of teaching three of our upper-level U.S. survey courses: American Founding (1753-1806); Democratic America (1807-1848); and [...]
The young man in the statue at Concord Bridge sports a tri-cornered hat. In one hand rests the musket. In the other, the plough. Every good American would rather farm than fight. But, every good American also knows there is a time to fight, a time to defend, a time to make good what has [...]
Virtue, then, being of two kinds, intellectual and moral, intellectual virtue in the main owes both its birth and its growth to teaching (for which reason it requires experience and time), while moral virtue comes about as a result of habit…–Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics In the study of physics, force is influence which tends to change [...]
The historian Michael Bellesiles tried to usher in the new millennium by claiming that guns were scarce in colonial America and even beyond. The problem was, it was quite easy to show that his research was flawed and his conclusions nonsensical. It wasn’t the first time that a historian with an agenda was found out, [...]
Will the Second Amendment still protect your rights a few years from now” Perhaps not, for it only survives today by a single vote in a sharply divided U.S. Supreme Court. In December, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer announced on national television his continuing opposition to a real Second Amendment right. If President Barack Obama [...]
Thomas Jefferson “The strongest reason for people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.” For more on the American Founding and civil liberties visit The Imaginative Conservative Bookstore. We hope you will join us in The Imaginative Conservative community. The Imaginative Conservative is an on-line journal for [...]