Americans historically have not just believed in the “right” to bear arms, but they have, more importantly, claimed an actual republican duty of all Americans to bear arms. Every two years at Hillsdale College, I have the immense privilege of teaching three of our upper-level U.S. survey courses: American Founding (1753-1806); Democratic America (1807-1848); and [...]
Going back to the first principles of the Founding, one finds that the Founders talked unceasingly about rights. Rights language became a critical part of the cultural landscape when James Otis delivered his oration on the nature of rights, the common law, and the natural law. Feel free to call me a conservative (I won’t [...]
To study the past requires a sense of tragedy and perhaps a belief in original sin, “the imagination of disaster” as Henry James called it. The celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, our annual exercise in national amnesia and self-congratulation, by contrast, promotes the myth that “all’s well that ends well.” Only the most [...]
In each country represented by adherents to truth or devotees of satyagraha—Gandhi’s concept of civil disobedience—their nonviolent efforts helped achieve seismic change and movement toward justice, all without resort to war. Their influence, and that of satyagraha, continues to cascade and ripple across the world incalculably. “I’m more convinced than ever before that nonviolence is [...]
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 [...]
While the Declaration of Independence may be linked in the popular imagination with notions of unfettered freedom and autonomy, in reality, the Declaration is greatly concerned with relationships, interrelationships, mutuality, and obligations. These relationships are governed by preexisting, inalienable natural rights and justice. In the beginning, the title was not the Declaration of Independence. Though [...]
At least since the time of the ancient philosopher Plato, private property rights have posed challenges to those aspiring to craft a just political society. During the nascent years of American civilization, the Pilgrim settlers of the New Plymouth Plantation followed a partly Platonic model of a commonwealth. The survival of their settlement, they initially [...]
It strikes me that all those who talk incessantly of “my rights” are acting pridefully, in the sense that they are making themselves the centre of their own microcosmos at the expense of their neighbours. If we want freedom, however, we must be prepared to pay the price for it. One way of gauging the [...]
The U.S. Constitution is important, and great, precisely because it recognizes that people and their rights are social by nature, and must remain rooted in their communities if we are to enjoy the benefits of ordered liberty under the rule of law. All nations have constitutions—whether written down or not. Why? Because every nation must [...]
America would be a more wholesome, more unified, and more decent place if liberals stopped thinking they have a monopoly on compassion and intelligence and conservatives stopped thinking they have a monopoly on patriotism and God. Warning: This is not a twenty-years-too-late movie review of a loosely-adapted romantic-comedy of The Taming of the Shrew. Instead, [...]
Many citizens today advocate “gun control.” If we restrict or eliminate gun ownership, their argument goes, we will reduce the number of murders. Nevertheless, the puzzle remains: Why were so few of our ancestors shooting one another when guns could be bought as easily as soap, shoes, and slipcovers? As I write these words, a [...]
Following the recent attack on a mosque in New Zealand by a white supremacist terrorist, I was asked by a national TV network in the UK to appear on a live show to give my perspective as a former white supremacist. (I served two prison sentences for “inciting racial hatred” back in the 1980s.) I [...]
The fundamental Traditionalist principle is that truth, which includes morality, is both knowable and unchanging. But is a traditionalist society possible in today’s day and age? The best way, I have found, to sum up my own views of society and politics is to call myself a Traditionalist. I was rather surprised to learn that [...]
Advocates of the liberal arts include “heretical” books in the great conversation, whereas political liberals seek to silence them as dangerous. As we have seen in Nazi Germany and in communist countries, the banning of “heretical” books ends with the burning of “heretics.” Several years ago, I visited the two-room shack in Tupelo, Mississippi, in [...]