On October 17, 1777, with his troops surrounded and vastly outmanned, British General John Burgoyne surrendered. The final battle of Saratoga was a major defeat for the British and word of British surrender further rallied troops in the Continental Army and the Militias. Although the end of the war and full British surrender was years [...]
The United States Navy celebrates October 13, 1775 as its birthday because that is the date on which the Continental Congress officially authorized the funding of two ships to interdict British forces. Over the course of the Revolutionary War, more than 50 Continental vessels harassed the British, seized munitions, supplied the Continental Army, and engaged [...]
Patriotic education is less about the specific curricular concepts that are featured in American history classes, and more about a philosophical stance that informs our approach, one full of explicit values and assumptions. It involves an audacious faith in America and tells the whole story of our past, which includes the bad with the good. [...]
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, [...]
John Calvin’s theology, as well as his influence on the civil government of Geneva, significantly influenced the founding of the United States. The Founding Fathers understood well the wisdom of Calvin’s teaching that original sin sometimes necessitated resisting tyrants and limiting the power of civil government, and were thus prepared when the time came to [...]
That it is the founding principles themselves to which we can turn to recover from the great evils of slavery, of the loss of virtue and moral standard, and of grotesque dehumanization should be a measure of the gratitude we owe to our Founding Fathers for their magnificent achievement. Robert R. Reilly is the author [...]
The relationship between science and the humanities is unavoidable simply because genealogies, in the end, are an extension of man’s thinking that combines reality with myth. Thomas Kuhn seemed to accept this fact, but today his colleagues’ aversion toward myth and magic has effected new iterations of magic that are devoid of meaning and spirituality. [...]
The role Gouverneur Morris played in the Miracle at Philadelphia is one that is often cropped out of the greater American Story. However, based on James Madison’s detailed account of the proceedings of the Convention, Morris has had a much greater impact on American political institutions than what Americans give him credit for. The American [...]
The 1619 Project is an instrument of propaganda whose insidious subtexts aim to promulgate the narrative that not only is America uniquely racist, but the nation cannot evolve beyond its history of slavery. Therefore, if America is to truly ascend, then the fatalism of the 1619 Project must be rejected. Criticisms of the 1619 Project [...]
Richard Henry Dana Sr.’s career followed a trajectory from romantic ardor, to disillusionment, to an embrace of traditionalism and social order. His life demonstrates that New England bore a rich Tory counter tradition of law and letters, not a monoculture of Whig and Republican industrialists, social reformers, and transcendentalist dreamers. Lucretia Mott listened with horror. [...]
Commissioned by Adolf Hitler, “Triumph of the Will” is a terrifying film. It is as if, for a moment, something infernal took control of the camera and caused the audience to be entranced, as it projected a lie into Germany’s consciousness, and then beyond to an unwilling world. As a consequence, 85 million people were [...]
John Colet’s life and learning represent Catholic humanism at its finest. He advocated for such reforms in education as the soundest minds of his day also desired. He knew the value of learning and—unlike more than a few intellectuals—he knew also the limits of its advantages. To play about carelessly with the words “humanist” and [...]
In the Old English poem, “Andreas,” the fate of the old giant-work and the fate of the pagans were linked. The pagan stones became the site of a church—not only because of the miraculous flood, but because of the faith of the Apostle Andrew in the redemptive possibilities of the past. In the context of [...]
In recounting the growth of one of the West’s grandest cultural achievements, James Gardner is an admirably conservative guide to the impressive qualities of the Louvre. Today when Western civilization is under attack as never before, it is a paradox that the encyclopedic art museum, one of the characteristic achievements of this civilization, is more [...]