About the impeachment of President Donald Trump she engineered with her Democratic majority, Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday: "It's not personal. It's not political. It's not partisan. It's patriotic." Seriously, Madam Speaker? Not political? Not partisan? Why then were all eight House members chosen as managers to prosecute the case against Trump, who ceremoniously escorted the [...]
The divisions among Virginians are not only over history, heroes and guns, they are also moral and religious. A new secession is underway. Virginians are separating from each other over issues as deep and divisive — such as who can take innocent life and when — as those that divided us in 1861. Since 1969, [...]
The plan for government that came from the Philadelphia convention was what Patrick Henry referred to as a beautiful butterfly with “poison under its wings.” The parchment barriers erected against monarchy and consolidation, he held, would only be as effective as the force backing them. The beginning of the American political order goes much further [...]
If you ask those who attended the debate between Sohrab Ahmari and David French at Catholic University who won the encounter, you will get different answers. However, most would agree that the packed event moderated by New York Times writer Ross Douthat did not get to the core of the matter. If you ask those [...]
The U.S. Constitution is important, and great, precisely because it recognizes that people and their rights are social by nature, and must remain rooted in their communities if we are to enjoy the benefits of ordered liberty under the rule of law. All nations have constitutions—whether written down or not. Why? Because every nation must [...]
September 17 is Constitutional Day. The conservative establishment will undoubtedly write platitudes to the Constitution, thus creating the illusion that our government still abides by it. It is true that Alexis de Tocqueville observed that the Constitution was the best-crafted document in the world. But that document crafted by the Founding Fathers and eulogized by [...]
To introduce a Bill of Rights for the protection of states’ legislative powers was to protect expressly the rights of the people from intrusion by the general government into their liberty. Unfortunately, initial fears about the reach of federal power and the erosion of state sovereignty have come true. A recurrent theme during the debates [...]
The constitutional inheritance is not merely a gift to be expended or consumed; it is a responsibility to be stewarded. This sense of intergenerational obligation—debts to the past and future—is the most solid and powerful grounding for originalism and respect for constitutional form. Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords our readers the opportunity [...]
It is essential that each new generation understand the meaning of the United States Constitution. Without an adequate understanding of the Constitution’s moral and cultural prerequisites, Democrats and Republicans will lack the moral and imaginative qualities necessary to cooperate; hence free government, which is dependent on inner ethical control, will be imperiled. If civil society [...]
James Madison wrote in “The Federalist” that the Constitution puts the states to the test: The stronger federal government will inaugurate a kind of competition in good government, breaking the states’ monopolies. Having founded republican regimes in America, regimes animated by respect for the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God as enunciated in their [...]
The Colorado Constitution remains one of the longest state constitutions, reflective of Coloradans’ inclination to instruct their government in exactly what it should do and cannot do. They knew they did not want a “do-nothing” government. The 1876 Colorado Constitution contains the strongest declaration of state’s rights of any American constitution: “The people of this [...]
New York showed its wealth of wisdom in ratifying the Constitution and becoming the 11th state in a fledgling nation. While the Empire State’s ratification was not required under the new Constitution for there to be a United States, had the vote gone the other way, the United States may have been for naught before [...]
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 our [...]
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. Even those who take seriously the criticisms of the Constitution by the anti-Federalists typically believe the Articles a disaster. A close examination, however, reveals that Articles [...]