Franklin Pierce’s suspicions reflected a tension within the antebellum Democratic Party in relation to slavery—how can we reconcile an advocacy of democratic decision-making with the existence of transcendent moral values, the Constitution with the Bible? On the stump in New Boston, New Hampshire in early January 1852, Franklin Pierce gave a long oration during which [...]
Is Robert Nisbet’s “The Quest for Community” a historical artifact or a living source of wisdom? Has his insight into the natural human desire for community become a moot point in light of the rise of the State, which has replaced the church, family, and neighborhood? Of the many books that Robert Nisbet wrote during [...]
The convergence of the American and British presidential and parliamentary systems on a new form of tyranny poses a serious threat to what scholar Walter Bagehot called “government by discussion,” the only civilized hope of free government known to mankind today. Introduction In his classic 1867 book The English Constitution, the great Economist editor and [...]
Will elementary, secondary, and university students, off campus as well as on campus, be forbidden to criticize, for example, critical race theory and the new American history curricula? And will that prohibition be extended to parents? The grandiose and centralized cradle-through-college education plans of Joe Biden and the Democratic party have now been plainly stated. [...]
In one of the great ironies of history, we find socialists and anarchists on the side of the new generation of slave-holders. The workers and wage-slaves of the world are being delivered into the hands of the overlords of the globalist future. These socialists and anarchists, obsessed with the slavery that was, sell us into [...]
Our founders were heirs to a great “mixed constitution” tradition—a tradition that insisted on balance and harmony among parts of the state to prevent anarchy and tyranny. Today that balance is threatened by the concentration of power in the same political party in the legislature and the executive, by proposals for radical judicial reform, by [...]
We need a culture in which the truly good figures of our past are not canceled because they did not talk in the same way as we do about moral and social issues. We also need a culture in which local and state figures are considered just as important as those on the national level. [...]
Even without the content of the general historical frame, William Wordsworth’s sonnet, “London 1802,” is moving to every generation that reads it, and it is natural to compare our current political situation with the one described in the poem. All of us, of course, remember the dire circumstances of England in 1802. No? Then we [...]
Big Tech want to impose upon us all a kind of insane and inhumane conformity. Yet, the critical point is that they do not impose themselves upon us as much as we let them impose themselves upon us. So, the most important thing we can do is exit. The following essay was originally a presentation [...]
The dangers associated with the imperial presidency are compounded by an awareness that, while new and more expansive theories of executive authority are seriously advanced, the office is not attracting individuals of high moral and intellectual character. The Philadelphia Constitution may be dead, but the basic problems which troubled the Framers—e.g., preserving the rule of [...]
Once the British had returned to first principles and right reason, Edmund Burke argued, they would also be reminded of the practical things, such as good government, the cultivation of the middle class, and the protection of property. In other words, through the fight against the French Revolution, the British would return to being properly [...]
Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s insertion of pantheism into politics makes the state into the church and creates a coercive political religion in the service of messianic purposes—as seen during the French Revolution. Overcoming this pantheistic desire for ultimate harmony is an important step in the quest for political rationality. In 1749, a solitary man walked out of [...]
In “The Reactionary Imperative,” Mel Bradford calls for a return to the roots of American order. Sadly, a return to a revised form of the Articles of Confederation is all but impossible. Hope, however, lies in a revivification of the principles of the Old Republicans of Thomas Jefferson’s day. Mel Bradford published a collection of [...]
As Edmund Burke observed, real community begins with the free and natural choice to associate at the most personal, familial, and local level, with each community growing from the ground up. By misunderstanding this, the French Revolutionaries seceded not just from Christendom, but from the laws of nature. In the final years of his life, [...]