Cancel Yale and Rename It “Dummer University”

By |2020-06-25T16:07:13-05:00June 25th, 2020|Categories: Education, Modernity, Politics, Slavery|

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. [...]

Was the Civil War Only About Slavery?

By |2020-06-14T17:26:12-05:00June 14th, 2020|Categories: American Republic, Books, Civil War, History, Slavery, War|

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 [...]

Jurgen Habermas, John C. Calhoun, and Slavery

By |2020-04-03T20:48:09-05:00April 3rd, 2020|Categories: American Republic, History, John C. Calhoun, Slavery, South|

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 [...]

1619, Slavery, the Founding, and All That

By |2022-07-12T08:46:32-05:00September 8th, 2019|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Bradley J. Birzer, Senior Contributors, Slavery|

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 [...]

The Forgotten Corners of Alexander Stephens’ “Cornerstone Speech”

By |2020-12-03T14:23:49-06:00August 12th, 2019|Categories: American Republic, Civil War, Equality, Government, History, Politics, Secession, Slavery, South, War|

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 [...]

“What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”

By |2020-07-04T13:01:34-05:00July 19th, 2019|Categories: American Republic, Declaration of Independence, History, Independence Day, Slavery|

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 [...]

Thomas Jefferson and the Paradox of Slavery

By |2021-04-27T11:22:58-05:00April 17th, 2018|Categories: Aristotle, Freedom, History, Mark Malvasi, Philosophy, Slavery, South, Thomas Jefferson|

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 [...]

The World They Made Together

By |2021-10-17T16:31:35-05:00January 10th, 2018|Categories: Books, Community, History, Slavery, Social Institutions, South, Thomas Jefferson|

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 [...]

Vindicating the Founders?

By |2020-04-09T10:56:57-05:00November 5th, 2017|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Books, Conservatism, Declaration of Independence, Equality, History, Liberalism, Slavery|

Conservatives should be troubled by Thomas West's claim that America has always been lib­eral and that the only historical discourse available today is that same liberalism. Vindicating the Founders: Race, Sex, Class, and Justice in the Origins of America, by Thomas G. West (211 pages, Rowman and Littlefield, 1997) Thomas West has written a courageous [...]

Race Against Reason

By |2019-01-25T08:41:10-06:00March 22nd, 2017|Categories: Christianity, Featured, G.K. Chesterton, Immigration, Joseph Pearce, Slavery|

What unites all people essentially and what gives all people their inalienable dignity, and the rights that follow therefrom, is their essential humanity… There can be no doubt that we are living in a racially-charged climate. The problems associated with the relations between the races seem to dominate the debate in all areas of our [...]

How Equality Is Misleading

By |2022-07-06T10:21:14-05:00February 28th, 2016|Categories: Abraham Lincoln, Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Equality, Featured, History, M. E. Bradford, Slavery|

Equality as a moral or political imperative, pursued as an end in itself is the antonym of every legitimate conservative principle. Contrary to most Liberals, new and old, it is nothing less than sophistry to distinguish between equality of opportunity and equality of condition. I Let us have no foolishness, indeed.* Equality as a moral or [...]

Go to Top