James Fenimore Cooper’s depiction of the frontier, as expressed in the “Leatherstocking Tales,” transcends race and sex. The frontier can make anyone a true American—noble, liberty-loving, and virtuous. Ultimately, “Americanness” is individual and cultural; it is based on virtue and merit. 1822-1827: Republicanism and the American Frontier With his third novel, The Pioneers, James Fenimore [...]
Political theory sets out to consider the kind of knowledge involved in political activity and the appropriate form of education that will continue to inculcate this knowledge and the value in sustaining such knowledge to society. Political theory may not be so theoretical, after all. Within political theory, there is a pressure to operate in [...]
Reflecting many thinkers before him, James Fenimore Cooper argued in his works that America had a biblical duty to be the “Light Upon the Hill.” Cooper also believed that both the frontier and republicanism made America unique, vigorous, and consequential, and he spent his adult life advocating a purely American form of art. “Places for [...]
I couldn’t help but see Mount Rushmore through the eyes of my children during our visit this summer. Given the recent events in America, I was craving something truly patriotic. As I looked upon the carved images of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Roosevelt, I felt the awed satisfaction of wonder and amazement. I’ve now been [...]
The battle for civilization requires knowledge of what is at its roots. Our digital culture is good for providing access, though of a precarious kind, to such knowledge. The battle also requires, however, habits of reading, listening, watching, thinking, and reflecting that are cultivated best in a non-digital environment. We are in a cold civil [...]
“The Tempest” is indubitably the final play that William Shakespeare wrote. Why did Shakespeare, who was still in good health, bow out in such an apparently premature fashion? What might have induced such a decision to leave his career in theatre? Now my charms are all o’erthrown, And what strength I have’s mine own, Which [...]
Thomas Jefferson, many scholars have thought, represented the ideal of human individualism and personality, a renaissance man who struggled mightily against mediocrity. In the spirit of Jefferson, an individual can reach his own unique potential by properly pursuing a liberal education. Though perhaps odd to our ears in 2020, the time period dealt with in [...]
Harry S. Truman explicitly tried to tie Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence to the events and crusades of his own day. He saw the Declaration of Independence as an international document, belonging to all peoples yearning for freedom. When the first copy of the first volume of The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, edited [...]
An oft-reprinted editorial, “Did Bellarmine Whisper to Thomas Jefferson?,” suggests that the American statesman might have been influenced by Robert Bellarmine. While recent scholarship has confirmed that Jefferson came to Bellarmine through the works of the radical Protestant intermediary, Algernon Sydney, is the Declaration of Independence really influenced by Catholic teaching? In the wake of [...]
On July 30, 1619, the newly appointed Governor, Sir George Yeardley, set in motion the concept of self-government in the Virginia colony. He called forth the first representative legislative assembly in America, establishing Virginia’s House of Burgesses—today, the Virginia Assembly. The yearning for self-government springs eternal. In the first Federalist essay, Alexander Hamilton famously observes: [...]
As we attempt to understand Marianne Moore’s baseball poems, it is important to see the contextual influence of her brother and their mutual interest in Pauline Christianity, a tradition they never abandoned. There is some mystery in the space between sport and religion that many Christian athletes inhabit and of which Marianne Moore is the [...]
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s work on historical liberalism and energetic conservatism suggests that the modern self must only divest himself of the “dry bones” of history in order to tap into the pure primordial “powers” of nature and so renew the world. Yet, is it not our collective heritage, both the good and the bad, that [...]
Albéric Magnard’s music is a happy amalgam of all that was best in Wagner, Franck, and Debussy. The gentle, nostalgic, and somewhat melancholy reminiscence of the past is a key part of his aesthetic and a clear legacy of his Schola Cantorum training. Yet his music is also progressive, looking forward unmistakably to the 20th [...]
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. This line will most likely sound familiar to every reader. It has been paraphrased countless times and is visible most notably in my mind as the quotation on the wall of one of the ghetto buildings in Auschwitz. Few know that the phrase was [...]