The Federal District of Columbia, both in its formal character as a capital and also in its self-conscious attempt at a certain visual splendor, is, for every visitor from the somewhat sovereign states, a reminder that the analogy of ancient Rome had a formative effect upon those who conceived and designed it as their one [...]
“Always a friend to peace, and believing it to promote eminently the happiness and prosperity of nations, I am ever unwilling that it should be disturbed, until greater and more important interests call for an appeal to force. Whenever that shall take place, I feel a perfect confidence that the energy and enterprise displayed by [...]
A Better Guide Than Reason: Studies in the American Revolution. (La Salle, IL: Sherwood Sugden & Company Publishers, 1979). Cited in the text as Guide. Remembering Who We Are: Observations of a Southern Conservative. (Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 1985). Cited in the text as Remembering. A Worthy Company: The Dramatic Story of [...]
What is the proper role of military power for a Republic? Is it the role of a Republic to maintain a large military presence in foreign lands? For what purpose would a Republic expend large amounts of blood and treasure to promote "democracy" in far away nations? What does this say in relation to countries, [...]
“Inspired by Liberty & Virtue: The Education of the Founders of the American Republic” was the keynote address given to the Free Enterprise Institute’s Founders’ Day Breakfast, November 2011. A slightly revised text version of this address can be found here. […]
Our mainstream media have discovered a new issue: inequality in America. The gap between the wealthiest 1 percent and the rest of the nation is wide and growing wider. This, we are told, is intolerable. This is a deformation of American democracy that must be corrected through remedial government action. What action? The rich must [...]
The American Revolution proceeded simultaneously on two levels: the state and the federal. While federal reform was essential, and while Virginians took the lead in achieving it, the state-level activity of those years struck contemporaries as more important. Virginia’s revolutionary May Convention adopted its three resolutions of May 15, 1776. In doing so, it decided [...]
By the early twenty-first century, Americans had become accustomed to, even took for granted, virtually everything against which George Washington and Thomas Jefferson had warned: gigantic public and private debt, a massive national government, entangling foreign alliances, a standing army, undeclared war in the form of military interventionism, the destruction of American agrarianism, and the [...]
James Madison, Jr. entered the world at midnight of the night of March 16-17, 1751.[1] By chance, he was an American prince. James Madison, Sr., the master of Montpellier in Piedmont Virginia’s semi-frontier Orange County, was the wealthiest man in the county. His lands were extensive, his slaveholdings were notable, and his family connections were [...]
Kevin Gutzman’s James Madison and the Making of America takes what we thought was a familiar story and gives it a fresh and important interpretation that challenges old orthodoxies and helps us better understand important episodes in American history. For instance, proper credit for the world-historic Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom is at last granted [...]
I am looking forward to reviewing this promising new book, Forgotten Conservatives in American History, by Brion McClanahan and Clyde N. Wilson. For now a teaser from the publisher is offered to our readers. “Americans weary of what passes for ‘conservatism’ in the circus of modern party politics owe McClanahan and Wilson profound thanks for recovering [...]
From historian Dumas Malone, we can, if we wish, begin to discern the real Jefferson. And that Jefferson is, in the broad outline of American history, identifiable in no other way than as a conservative. The Sage of Monticello, by Dumas Malone, Volume Six of Jefferson and His Time In 1809 Thomas Jefferson yielded up [...]
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