History on Proper Principles: The Legacy of Forrest McDonald

By |2024-01-07T09:40:44-06:00January 6th, 2024|Categories: Alexander Hamilton, American Founding, American Republic, Featured, Federalist Papers, Forrest McDonald, History, Literature, Stephen M. Klugewicz, Timeless Essays|

Forrest McDonald demonstrated that the historian above all must be a pragmatist who looks at the reality of the past as it was, who gets his hands dirty by putting in long hours of research, who makes sense of vast quantities of data, and who then communicates what he has found in an understandable and [...]

The American Presidency: The Living Embodiment of the Nation

By |2022-10-05T14:54:36-05:00October 5th, 2022|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Books, Forrest McDonald, Timeless Essays|Tags: |

Few contemporary books reflect Forrest McDonald’s prodigious research on “The American Presidency,” nor bring to bear such a breadth of historical insight. If you seek a deeply historical and substantively rich overview of the U.S. presidency, this book is without peer. The American Presidency: An Intellectual History by Forrest McDonald (528 pages, University Press of Kansas, [...]

The Rhetoric of Alexander Hamilton

By |2023-07-12T00:40:41-05:00September 26th, 2022|Categories: Alexander Hamilton, American Founding, American Republic, Forrest McDonald, Timeless Essays|Tags: |

Political rhetoric of the Founders has received scant scholarly attention, but Alexander Hamilton’s style of rhetorical reasoning enabled him to educate and persuade. The political rhetoric of the Founders of the American Republic has received scant attention from scholars. The relative neglect is understandable. On the one hand, the very concept of rhetoric has, in [...]

Original Unintentions: The Franchise and the Constitution

By |2022-09-16T17:05:19-05:00September 16th, 2022|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Constitution, Forrest McDonald, Timeless Essays|Tags: |

Certain features of the Constitution are almost invisible because they refer to previously existing institutions, constitutions, laws, and customs that are nowhere defined in the Constitution itself. The controversy over originalism-the question whether judges, in interpreting the Constitution, should be guided by the original intentions of the Framers or by some other standard-has generated a [...]

“The Speech”: Maintaining Sanity in an Insane World

By |2022-08-24T18:52:57-05:00August 24th, 2022|Categories: Civilization, Culture, Forrest McDonald, Hope, Imagination, Timeless Essays, Wisdom|

I propose to address the question, how does one survive—and I mean survive as something—in a world that may not? How does one remain sane in a world that is insane; how does one live without fear in a world in which the only certainty is that nothing is certain? As the new year arrives, [...]

George Washington: Indispensable Man

By |2024-02-22T06:20:09-06:00February 21st, 2022|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Forrest McDonald, George Washington, Timeless Essays|Tags: |

George Washington was respected, admired, even revered by his countrymen, and he was the most trusted man of the age. What is more, and different, he was the most trustworthy man. The question of why this is so must be examined if we are to understand Washington’s true legacy. The men who established the American [...]

Do We Really Understand What an Economy Is?

By |2021-06-24T11:34:40-05:00June 24th, 2021|Categories: Economics, Essential, Faith, Family, Featured, Forrest McDonald, John Willson, Labor/Work, Timeless Essays|

It is up to our “little platoons” to restore the respect for work that alone can restore health to an economic order. It is a long road, but a good start on going down the that road is to read carefully our historians and poets. M. Stanton Evans once said, in defense of free markets: [...]

Reflections on the American Presidency

By |2021-01-06T18:35:20-06:00February 16th, 2020|Categories: Audio/Video, Forrest McDonald, History, Presidency|

“Though the caliber of people who have served as chief executive has declined erratically but persistently from the day George Washington left office, the presidency has been responsible for less harm and more good, in the nation and in the world, than perhaps any other secular institution in history." —Forrest McDonald, The American Presidency: An [...]

Fellow Miracles, Let Us Rejoice Together!

By |2021-09-18T08:50:24-05:00January 19th, 2019|Categories: American Founding, Forrest McDonald|

The following is the conclusion of Professor Forrest McDonald's 2002 address to the last class he taught as a regular member of the faculty at the University of Alabama—known as "The Speech." Dr. McDonald retired thereafter from teaching.  The other pre-requisite for living sanely in an insane world is an attitude toward life, which I [...]

History on Proper Principles: The Legacy of Forrest McDonald

By |2019-09-24T15:31:53-05:00January 7th, 2019|Categories: Alexander Hamilton, American Founding, American Republic, Federalist Papers, Forrest McDonald, History, Literature, Timeless Essays|

Forrest McDonald demonstrated that the historian above all must be a pragmatist who looks at the reality of the past as it was, who gets his hands dirty by putting in long hours of research, who makes sense of vast quantities of data, and who then communicates what he has found in an understandable and [...]

The Imaginative Historian: Forrest McDonald & the Art of History

By |2021-01-06T18:05:19-06:00July 15th, 2018|Categories: Books, Forrest McDonald, History, Imagination, Stephen M. Klugewicz, Timeless Essays|

Many believe that objectivity is the historian’s goal. But Forrest McDonald believed that history by its very nature entails artifice; the historian is not simply a mere recorder or reporter of events, but also an artist. “History is marble, and remains forever cold, even under the most artistic hand, unless life is breathed into it [...]

Was Alexander Hamilton a Great Man?

By |2020-09-01T13:38:04-05:00February 5th, 2018|Categories: Alexander Hamilton, American Founding, Books, Forrest McDonald, History, Timeless Essays|

Forrest McDonald’s biography of Alexander Hamilton most likely will prove indispensable. What Hamilton thought, and how he came to think it, is nowhere else so plain as here. Alexander Hamilton: A Biography by Forrest McDonald (464 pages, W.W. Norton & Co., 1982) That Alexander Hamilton was among the most luminous and creative of the Founding Fathers every [...]

Non-Ideological History: Forrest McDonald’s “Novus Ordo Seclorum”

By |2020-11-09T19:52:46-06:00January 6th, 2017|Categories: Books, Constitution, Featured, Forrest McDonald|Tags: |

Conservatives of every persuasion who are sincerely interested in the truth are in Forrest McDonald‘s debt. If we are to understand the Founders, we should follow McDonald’s example and strive to study our heritage as dispassionately and as reflectively as possible. Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution, by Forrest McDonald (University Press [...]

The First Function of Founders of Nations

By |2021-12-09T21:30:40-06:00July 4th, 2016|Categories: American Founding, Forrest McDonald, History, Quotation|

The first function of the founders of nations, after the founding itself, is to devise a set of true falsehoods about origin—a mythology—that will make it desirable for nationals to continue to live under common authority, and, indeed, make it impossible for them to entertain contrary thoughts. Ordinarily the founding, being the less subtle of [...]

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