John Courtney Murray’s “We Hold These Truths” is hardly a tumbleweed of early-twentieth-century Catholic social thought. Though it initially helped to reconcile Catholicism and the religious pluralism that our nation champions, it is also a work that deals deeply with that taboo concept of today: patriotism. Reading John Courtney Murray’s famous work, We Hold These [...]
This is the 4th of July. It is the birthday of your National Independence, and of your political freedom. This, to you, is what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God. Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What, to the American slave, is [...]
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. As Americans prepare [...]
The need for understanding our roots is as timeless as the human story itself and explains why we cling to the Declaration of Independence. Most people know that the Fourth of July—Independence Day—is a celebration of America’s separation from Great Britain. July 4, 1776 marks the beginning of the United States. It’s like our national birthday. [...]
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 [...]
Thomas Jefferson is a kind of incarnate compendium of the Enlightenment. His remarkable openness to its spirit is the philosophical counterpart to his political sensitivity in making himself “a passive auditor of the opinions of others,” so as to catch the “harmonizing sentiments of the day” and to incorporate them into a document that would [...]
The Declaration of Independence is the product of the spiritual insight of the people. If we are to maintain the great heritage which has been bequeathed to us, we must be like-minded as the fathers who created it. We must not sink into a pagan materialism. We must cultivate the reverence which they had for [...]
Editor’s Note: We invite you to join Thomas Jefferson (portrayed by Bill Barker) as he explores the remarkable history of the early American Republic and the principles that undergird it. From Jamestown to Plymouth, from the American Revolution to the Louisiana Purchase, the promise of free enterprise has driven the course of human history on [...]
Conservatives should be troubled by Thomas West's claim that America has always been liberal and that the only historical discourse available today is that same liberalism. Vindicating the Founders: Race, Sex, Class, and Justice in the Origins of America, by Thomas G. West (211 pages, Rowman and Littlefield, 1997) Thomas West has written a courageous [...]
Harry Jaffa’s constitutional history of America’s late-eighteenth-century is not credible nor, in keeping with many of his own pronouncements, is it conservative… The writing of history, as we have learned from authors as diverse as Thucydides, Voltaire, Nietzsche, Butterfield, Collingwood, and Oakeshott can and has been done in strikingly different ways while serving radically different [...]
We need to develop a fully American variant of conservatism; to advance our understanding of the conservative nature of the political traditions we have inherited; and to do so with a dignity that will permit us to stand before God, the American public, and our conservative forebears. In the next century, because of both need [...]
Americans turned to the concrete lessons of history and experience to guide them in securing their liberty. The French, on the other hand, deified Reason above not only experience, but also above religion and divine revelation. One of the many differences between the American and French Revolutions is that, unlike the French, Americans did not [...]
In a certain sense, Thomas Jefferson’s allies and enemies invented him in the years following his resignation from the Washington Administration. To the former, he became something akin to a Second Coming of the Savior, while to the latter, he seemed nothing less than a version of the Anti-Christ… Confounding Father: Thomas Jefferson’s Image in [...]
We ought to locate the basis of American conservatism in our colonial past, at a time when the English Tory variant of the old order of Europe had a real presence in our civilization, and we ought to remember that the old Tory order survived in the American historical tradition despite the Revolution of '76, [...]