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 [...]

America’s Identity Crisis: National Character & Political Disorder

By |2023-08-01T16:20:20-05:00August 1st, 2023|Categories: Character, Featured, Nationalism, Republicanism, Timeless Essays|

I suggest a crisis by collecting in one breath the terms national character and political disorder. Nor do I shrink from the implicit affirmation that the people of the United States confront an identity crisis at the very center of our national existence, at once moral and political and touching precisely upon the reciprocal relationship [...]

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 [...]

Republicanism and “The Federalist” Papers

By |2022-11-09T13:10:04-06:00November 9th, 2022|Categories: American Republic, Constitution, Featured, Federalist Papers, George W. Carey, Republicanism, Timeless Essays|Tags: |

The first essay of The Federalist provides a convenient point of departure for exploring Publius’s conception of republicanism and the problems associated with it. Towards the end of this essay, he informs us that among the “interesting particulars” he intends to take up in the subsequent papers is “The conformity of the proposed Constitution to [...]

Policing the World

By |2021-08-22T13:34:43-05:00August 22nd, 2021|Categories: Constitution, History, Republicanism, Statesman, Timeless Essays|Tags: , , |

Benjamin Harrison insisted America’s truly dangerous enemies were not Great Powers abroad but a lapse of integrity and purity at home. He believed republicanism would spread in the world by “sympathy and emulation” and feared the harm Americans might do to themselves and to others should they undertake to extend their institutions by force: “We [...]

Limits of the Founding

By |2021-07-19T01:18:47-05:00July 19th, 2021|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Books, Bradley J. Birzer, Republicanism, Senior Contributors|

Just as no person can last forever, no republic can last forever. The trick, however, to prolonging its life is to promote that which gives it energy and vigor in its youth—virtue—and that which also staves off the inevitable tepidness that accompanies mid-life: audacity. No true republican believes that a republic lasts forever. Far from [...]

The Forgotten American System

By |2020-05-18T18:24:30-05:00May 18th, 2020|Categories: American Republic, Economic History, Economics, Free Trade, History, Politics, Republicanism|

Many people are unfamiliar with the “American System,” the policy of protection as the bulwark of industrial independence, and the foundation of American development and prosperity. A return to the American System would be a major step toward increasing prosperity and restoring the traditional social order in the United States. When Donald Trump spoke at [...]

Donald Trump and Religious Liberty

By |2020-02-07T18:50:14-06:00January 20th, 2020|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Constitution, Donald Trump, Government, Liberalism, Politics, Religion, Republicanism|

Many of America’s founders defended religious liberty, believing it grounded on the duty men and women have to worship their Creator. As late as the 1990s, Democrats and Republicans were able to work together to protect that liberty, but unfortunately, the political left has begun to abandon religious freedom. As the 2020 presidential campaign heats [...]

The Yachtsman and the Revolution

By |2020-03-16T19:01:43-05:00September 12th, 2019|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, History, Republicanism, Revolution|

James Henry Stark was a historian and defender of the Loyalists in an age of high reverence for the American Revolution. Stark’s unhappiness at the public presentation and textbook renderings of the Revolution seethed for years, until finally in 1910 he published “Loyalists of Massachusetts” to settle the debate. In March 1910, the wealthy Boston [...]

From Union to Empire: Essays in the Jeffersonian Tradition

By |2021-04-22T18:17:31-05:00April 12th, 2019|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Books, Clyde Wilson, Essential, Republicanism, Thomas Jefferson, Timeless Essays, W. Winston Elliott III|

From Union to Empire: Essays in the Jeffersonian Tradition by Clyde N. Wilson (356 pages, The Foundation for American Education, 2003) “To check power, to return the American empire to republicanism we do not need to resort to the drastic right of revolution nor to the destructive goal of anarchic individualism. We have in the [...]

American Conservatism & the Old Republic

By |2021-11-10T07:32:43-06:00October 22nd, 2017|Categories: Abraham Lincoln, American Founding, American Republic, Conservatism, Featured, History, Presidency, Republicanism, Russell Kirk, Thomas Jefferson, Timeless Essays|

If anything identifies a conservative, it is his realistic appraisal of human nature—his appreciation of what is good and admirable, and his recognition of what is base. As some renditions of American history would have it, the conservative pedigree in the United States begins with, or at the very least includes, Alexander Hamilton and his [...]

Constitutional Morality vs. Class Warfare: The Right Rhetoric for a Republic

By |2019-06-06T18:46:00-05:00July 9th, 2017|Categories: American Founding, Constitution, Featured, Federalist Papers, Republicanism, Rhetoric, Timeless Essays, Wyoming Catholic College|

For some time now, our political rhetoric has increasingly moved toward an opposition between classes, causing tension—indeed a kind of warfare—between what Aristotle called the few rich and the many poor. Our founders worked hard to bridge this gap… Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords readers the opportunity to join Virginia Arbery as [...]

“Republican Government” According to John Adams

By |2021-10-29T12:14:40-05:00August 31st, 2016|Categories: American Republic, Featured, Great Books, History, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Adams, John Locke, Liberty, Natural Law, Philosophy, Political Science Reviewer, Republicanism|

John Adams wondered why men cannot live together “naturally” at peace, with the justice of their relations emerging immediately from the operation of reason in each individual. As elaborated thus far, natural law teaches that legitimate government is circumscribed by liberty in a dual sense: It derives from the consent of equally free individuals, and [...]

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