Refusing to dwell upon the “subjunctive abyss”—that bottomless, tormenting sense of what has been denied or taken away—Eumaios the swineherd gives his energies to what he can do and do well. He practices virtue on his own with no one else to enforce it and reminds the wandering Odysseus what real nobility is. Whatever I [...]
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 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 [...]
Europeans introduced the “Five Civilized Tribes” of the southeast to the institution of racial slavery. And during the Civil War, the Five Civilized Tribes fought on both the Union and Confederate sides. This often-overlooked part of American history takes on new significance in light of today’s debates over slavery reparations and monuments to those who [...]
The origins of human things are flawed, no question, and inequalities remain. But should we not try to honor the principles of Washington or Jefferson and distinguish them from the prejudices of the day that they shared? The curriculum at Wyoming Catholic College has much wisdom to offer in the current crisis, much that should [...]
I think every right-thinking individual should get behind the #CancelYale movement. And lest anyone complain that such movements are merely negative, that they cancel but do not replace with something new, I want to accompany #CancelYale with a concrete, positive suggestion: #DummerUniversity. I see that #CancelYale is trending on Twitter and elsewhere in social media. [...]
As Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr. rightly points out in his new book, there is no denying that there were other questions besides the issue of slavery energizing the air prior to the War Between the States, questions which cannot be entirely trivialized. It Wasn’t About Slavery: Exposing the Great Lie of the Civil War, by [...]
Perhaps no American thinker has suffered more from a scholarly hegemony of discourse than John C. Calhoun, whose work and personage are often dismissed by his critics for a single phrase attributed to him, diminishing the careful and complicated analysis he deserves. The careful reader does not have to be a devotee of Jürgen Habermas [...]
For nearly fifty years, we have taught American children that the three greatest determinants in history are race, class, and gender. Virtue is scoffed at; “Great Men” are mocked; and free will is ignored. Should we be shocked—do we even have the right to be shocked—that our press, our culture, and our educators are obsessed [...]
History is complex, messy, and unyielding to our dearest wishes for easy categorization. That Alexander Stephens understood the Confederacy through its cornerstone of slavery is plainly true and explained in his own words. But the “Cornerstone Speech” goes further, planting the other corners of the Confederate state in concerns over federalism and sovereignty. Anxious onlookers [...]
This is the 4th of July. It is the birthday of your National Independence, and of your political freedom. This, to you, is what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God. Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What, to the American slave, is [...]
When Americans claim that the 2016 election was the most contentious in history or that we’ve never been as divided as a people as we are now, I have to try very hard not to be smug. After all, unlike folks who actually have to show a profit each year, I as a college professor [...]
The masters of slaves, it turned out, were themselves neither independent nor self-sufficient, but were bound to, and reliant upon, their slaves both for their welfare and their identity. This vague recognition in part accounts for the grim tone that Thomas Jefferson adopted in his analysis of slavery: He had to confront the prospect that [...]
Thomas Jefferson had hardly been exposed to the scientific and literary talents of black people except, to some extent, Phyllis Wheatley and Benjamin Banneker. At the end of his life, blacks in America were at the portal of coming into their own and would flower in the pursuits he most admired by the mid-late-19th century [...]