Andrew Carnegie, Equality, & American Progress

By |2023-05-29T19:52:04-05:00May 29th, 2023|Categories: Alexis de Tocqueville, American Republic, Equality, History, Ted McAllister, Timeless Essays|

To Andrew Carnegie, equality meant a way of being, a condition that shaped the soul of the individual and thereby the soul of a people or nation. Equality not only unleashed the energy of the American people so that they would become the most prosperous in the world, but it shaped their moral condition, it [...]

An Empire of Reason

By |2023-05-04T14:30:01-05:00May 4th, 2023|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Audio/Video|

Please enjoy this famous hour-long movie produced by Icarus Films and shown on PBS in 1988. From the website of Icarus Films: What would it have been like if television had covered the ratification process of the U.S. Constitution? Such is the premise of AN EMPIRE OF REASON, an imaginative look back at that process [...]

Let Justice Be Our Guide: Federalism & the Constitutional Convention

By |2023-05-03T11:57:21-05:00May 3rd, 2023|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Constitution, Constitutional Convention, Featured, Federalist Papers, Timeless Essays|Tags: |

The paramount issue facing the Constitutional Convention was how to secure the safety and happiness of the people. Therefore, the paramount question which guided the deliberations was: What is justice? James H. Hutson concludes his valuable 1984 survey of two hundred years of Constitutional scholarship on a pessimistic note. Scholarship, says Hutson, is at a [...]

Gordon Lloyd: A Remembrance

By |2023-05-05T16:53:29-05:00May 2nd, 2023|Categories: American Founding, Constitution, Constitutional Convention, Stephen M. Klugewicz|

Such was Gordon Lloyd's contagious energy that his presence at an academic program guaranteed its success. Even now I can see him, with his irrepressible enthusiasm, almost hopping across the stage in excitement, brushing back the bangs of his wavy white hair as they fly about, and boyishly declaiming in the Caribbean accent of his [...]

President James Monroe and Republican Virtue

By |2023-04-27T16:29:11-05:00April 27th, 2023|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Bradley J. Birzer, Character, Government, History, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays|

Whatever his failings as an imaginative thinker, President James Monroe’s own convictions were rooted deeply in the spirit and the letter of the U.S. Constitution. As he entered the White House in March 1817, he had little (well, less) use for James Madison’s newfound love of nationalism. While he entered the presidency too late to [...]

Let Us Remember Lexington and Concord!

By |2023-04-18T15:02:34-05:00April 18th, 2023|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Bradley J. Birzer, Memorial Day, Timeless Essays|

Outnumbering the Lexington militia nearly ten to one, the British easily won the skirmish. But, symbolically, they lost. For at the moment the first Lexingtonian died, the American Republic was born. British Major Pitcarne took six companies of an advance team to scout out Lexington, Massachusetts, early morning, April 19, 1775. Behind him marched nearly [...]

Orestes Brownson’s New England & the Unwritten Constitution

By |2023-04-16T17:38:55-05:00April 16th, 2023|Categories: American Republic, Civil Society, Constitution, Culture, Featured, History, Political Philosophy, Politics, Timeless Essays|

Orestes Brownson so esteemed New England people, customs, and institutions that they dominated his writings and fit at the heart of his political ideas. The danger of majoritarian tyranny hangs over republics. The dilemma of constituting a virtuous republic while also restricting interests, sects, and factions’ use of unchecked political power possessed eighteenth century American [...]

A Republic If You Can Keep It: Religion, Civil Society, & America’s Founding

By |2023-04-16T17:46:30-05:00April 16th, 2023|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Civil Society, Morality, Religion, Timeless Essays, Virtue|

Though civil libertarians rightly point out the dangers of an unchecked government, they blissfully ignore the dangers of an unchecked, unrestrained populace. It is thus worthwhile to return to the founders and examine what role they desired religion and morality to play in their new Republic. The story goes that as Benjamin Franklin departed from [...]

M.E. Bradford’s Revolutionary “A Better Guide Than Reason”

By |2023-03-22T18:33:40-05:00March 22nd, 2023|Categories: Agrarianism, American Founding, American Republic, Books, John Dickinson, M. E. Bradford, Patrick Henry, South, Southern Agrarians, Thomas Jefferson, Timeless Essays|

No one who reads and digests “A Better Guide Than Reason” can fail to be revolutionized. We had thought that the great Southern political tradition—that of Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, John C. Calhoun, and the agrarians—was dead. Not so. A Better Guide Than Reason: Studies in the American Revolution by M.E. Bradford (241 pages, Sherwood Sugden [...]

Liberty & Republicanism: The Patrick Henry/Onslow Debate

By |2023-03-22T18:13:47-05:00March 22nd, 2023|Categories: John C. Calhoun, John Quincy Adams, Lee Cheek, Republicanism, Sean Busick, Timeless Essays|

The fiercely contested, yet inconclusive election of 1824 set the stage for one of the great debates of American political history. “Mr. Onslow, the ablest among Speakers of the House of Commons, used to say ‘It was a maxim he had often heard when he was a young man, from old and experienced members, that [...]

America’s “Logres”: The Mythology of a Nation

By |2023-03-19T19:16:50-05:00March 19th, 2023|Categories: American Republic, C.S. Lewis, Culture, Flannery O'Connor, Imagination, Literature, Myth, Timeless Essays|

C.S. Lewis believed that every nation possesses what he called a “haunting,” a “Logres,” which baptizes it with a unique inner life. What, or where, is America’s Logres? Who is the mythological hero that could guide the American identity the way Arthur guided Britain and inspired generations of English poets and artists? During my undergraduate [...]

Madison’s “Extended Republic” and the Culture Wars

By |2023-03-15T18:04:01-05:00March 15th, 2023|Categories: American Republic, Culture War, Government, James Madison, Politics, Timeless Essays|

Centering our national politics on the culture wars is unhelpful because in the end it simply is not cut out for this. The optimal jurisdictional sphere for resolving many of our cultural battles will be localities, not states. Localities must be empowered boldly to operate and experiment within the immense gray areas that the questions [...]

And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln & the American Struggle

By |2023-05-06T22:48:28-05:00March 14th, 2023|Categories: Abraham Lincoln, American Republic, Books, Civil War, History, Slavery|

Is there room for yet another biography of Abraham Lincoln? Of course there is, especially if the biographer in question is as deft and insightful as Jon Meacham. And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle by Jon Meacham (676 pages, Random House, 2022) Is there room for yet another biography of Abraham [...]

Three Reasons Why a “National Divorce” Would Shatter America

By |2023-03-05T23:36:31-06:00March 5th, 2023|Categories: American Republic, John Horvat|

Secession solves none of America's problems. It will only accelerate the processes of moral decadence and national destruction. Only the arduous fight for a return to God and a moral order will provide the way out of the present crisis for all Americans. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is calling for a “national divorce” between red [...]

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