What makes the secular and the Christian outlook on freedom and appetites different is the direction of our gaze. Contemporary secular freedom, as expressed in America today, directs us to look inward, toward our appetites. Our Christian freedom, on the other hand, directs us to look outward, toward those whom we can love. Polemarchus has [...]
Too often foundations support particular political causes rather than supporting the even greater need for a citizenry schooled in the Constitution. But if we really want to make a difference in our nation, I suggest funding courses on the Constitution and the Founding documents in every high school, college, and university in the country. The [...]
The hope of virtuous social change is a good thing, but the change starts first in the soul of religious conviction and the hearth of the family before government can support and enact positive change. When advocates of social welfare deny the foundations of faith and family, they deny the foundations of progress in any [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
So, if Robert R. Reilly is correct in his analysis and assessment of the American Founding in his book “America on Trial,” where did the American experiment in ordered liberty go wrong? I would suggest that the problem is neither progressivism nor its philosophical antecedent historicism, baleful as they both might be. Rather, it is [...]
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 [...]
After abolishing the filibuster, says Barack Obama, Democrats should ram through statehood for Puerto Rico and D.C., thereby expanding the Senate to 104 members, and adding four new Democratic senators. That new Senate, says Mr. Obama, should enact every law possible to enlarge and expand the electorate, including extending the ballot to ex-convicts. "When the [...]
The bold yet solution-adverse signatories of the “Harper’s” letter are pointing us toward a world where the left and right side of the aisle can once again amicably communicate. Nowhere is this more important than on college campuses, where students should be immersed in a world of thought and discourse that pushes the boundaries 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: [...]
Long have political theorists argued that people naturally congregate with the similarly-minded. We haven’t seen yet a large-scale, purposeful internal migration based primarily upon cultural and religious beliefs, but in our current polarized society, overwhelmed with growing social chaos, it appears that we are about to. As Americans, we are accustomed to a variety of [...]
In times of chaos, it’s profoundly necessary to remember those who have come before us and the innumerable sacrifices they made. Each of these great men, whatever his individual faults, sought to live according to the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. They preserved, and they conserved. As a way of perceiving and a habit [...]
If it’s time to “defund” the police department of Minneapolis, maybe it’s also time to “defund” the K-12 sector of what passes for public education in Minnesota. The idea is to fund parents instead. The radical idea of school choice will directly empower parents, which is something that defunding the police will not do. In [...]
Race-obsessed mania could signal the final demise of the American university. It has, however, been a long time dying, and many would say that it has been a long time coming. Those who saw the Academy’s abandonment of the rational foundations on which it was built knew that its collapse was inevitable. “This is the [...]