The lack of schooling in the formation of one of every four U.S. presidents underscores the paradox that even the most humble among them were often great champions of education in general and of the liberal arts in particular… Can the liberal arts prepare citizens for leadership? Most of us in higher education want the [...]
In 2016 Americans are feeling anxious. It’s not that we are experiencing crises—we are neither in total war nor economic depression. Yet 2016 has forced us to rethink all we thought we knew. A Socialist made a credible run for the Democratic nomination and succeeded in moving the Democratic Party platform farther left than it [...]
Professor Stephen Tonsor Back in the 1980s, when I told a friend that I was doing graduate work in history at Michigan, he looked surprised: “But you are conservative, and there aren’t any conservatives on the faculty in Ann Arbor.” “Oh, that’s not true,” I shot back, “I had lunch with him.” Academic [...]
Speaking about The Conservative Mind on the book’s sixtieth anniversary, Gleaves Whitney explains why Russell Kirk chose Edmund Burke as his book’s central figure. Kirk believed that Burke understood the fragility of civilization and knew that free peoples will have both parties of innovation and conservation. How our culture appropriately balances the will of the two will dictate [...]
Common Ground between Whom? A lot of people are skeptical about what the Hauenstein Center is trying to do. Seriously now: common ground between conservatives and progressives? Each camp has been telling me how much it can’t stand the other. In popular culture, conservatives regard progressives as arrogant, woolly-minded, and un-American; progressives see conservatives as [...]
“Imagination rules the world,” Russell Kirk used to say.[1] He meant that imagination is a force that molds the clay of our sentiments and understanding.[2] It is not chiefly through calculations, formulas, and syllogisms, but by means of images, myths, and stories that we comprehend our relation to God, to nature, to others, and to the self. [...]
Through the ages the death of civilizations, no less than the death of human beings, has fascinated unnumbered observers of the human condition. For those who seek examples of civilization’s perdurability, the historical record is not reassuring. After all, what is Sumeria today but eroding ziggurats on the plain of Shinar? What remains of the [...]
Deepen your understanding of the Constitutional Convention with this outstanding lecture… […]
Please enjoy this video lecture on Benjamin Franklin by Gleaves Whitney, the Executive Director of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation. […]
Why the Fame? Given John Adams’s liabilities–his prickly personality, several career setbacks, and the inconvenient fact that his presidency was shoehorned between that of eminent Virginians–it is hardly surprising that his revival came so late–200 years after his retirement from public life. I’d argue that it is not justifiable to give all the credit to [...]
It was Thomas Jefferson and America’s founding generation that set culture on a new course when they declared that all human beings had the inalienable right to the “pursuit of happiness.” It has been said that that phrase in the Declaration of Independence has done more to shape the sensibilities of the modern age than [...]
John Adams has finally gotten the fame he craved, but it was a long time coming over a rough road. Already as a young man he tortured himself thinking about a future without fame. John Adams has finally gotten the fame he craved, but it was a long time coming over a rough road. Already [...]
John Adams’ public life makes for a compelling story. Consider the number of firsts that he is associated with during the early days of the republic. Once Forgotten Founding Father and Philosopher President Makes a Comeback…. Why? Ten years ago, David McCullough told audiences something that still has the capacity to surprise us. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author said [...]
To understand America, do not start with 1787. Or 1776. Or 1492. To understand America—or more precisely the most ancient roots of American order—go back to the second millennium B.C., to the Hebrews. Ancient Israel has had more influence on American culture than you think. So argues Russell Kirk in his magisterial work, The Roots [...]