“The earth belongs in usufruct to the living.” These are not Thomas Jefferson’s most famous words, but they are quite famous among students of politics. They have been used for generations to justify radical political change. And, like the soaring rhetoric of the preamble to the Declaration of Independence, these Jeffersonian words have gained him great [...]
It seems to be a tendency of literary critics to attach to the opinions of contemporary writers a significance unjustified with regard to the effect of such opinions upon current social movements. A Voltaire, an Adam Smith, even a Dickens’ Oliver Twist may change the world, but not so the works of the usual writer [...]
Historians tend to dismiss conservatism as irrelevant to the American experience. Conservatism—dispositional as opposed to programmatic in nature—is often hard to see, especially for historians who tend to use the lens of “progress” in looking at history. Forgotten Conservatives in American History, by Brion McClanahan and Clyde Wilson (200 pages, Pelican, 2012) Is there a [...]
At the risk of seeming too parochial, I want to outline the dimensions of a problem that has been of special concern for me and other conservative students of the American political tradition, broadly defined. This concern is not as narrow as it may at first seem. Nor, by any standard, is it insignificant; it [...]
And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of the society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, and to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering. [...]
The American Presidency, by Forrest McDonald Twice, in The American Presidency, Professor Forrest McDonald states that the executive office of our government “has been responsible for less harm and more good … than perhaps any other secular institution in history.” In the same sentence, he also notes that “the caliber of the people who have served as chief [...]
What we think of Thomas Jefferson is likely to express precisely what we believe America is all about. For this most versatile and likeable of the Founding Fathers looms large in our history and in the symbol and imagery by which our imaginations have colored the past. For some, Jefferson is the preeminent voice of [...]
Friends, you must have either Jefferson or Hamilton. All the fundamental conflicts in our history were adumbrated during the first decade of the General Government in the contest symbolized by these two men. Hamilton lost in the short run, but triumphed in the long run. He would find much that is agreeable in the present American [...]
“Always a friend to peace, and believing it to promote eminently the happiness and prosperity of nations, I am ever unwilling that it should be disturbed, until greater and more important interests call for an appeal to force. Whenever that shall take place, I feel a perfect confidence that the energy and enterprise displayed by [...]
Our mainstream media have discovered a new issue: inequality in America. The gap between the wealthiest 1 percent and the rest of the nation is wide and growing wider. This, we are told, is intolerable. This is a deformation of American democracy that must be corrected through remedial government action. What action? The rich must [...]
The American Revolution proceeded simultaneously on two levels: the state and the federal. While federal reform was essential, and while Virginians took the lead in achieving it, the state-level activity of those years struck contemporaries as more important. Virginia’s revolutionary May Convention adopted its three resolutions of May 15, 1776. In doing so, it decided [...]
By the early twenty-first century, Americans had become accustomed to, even took for granted, virtually everything against which George Washington and Thomas Jefferson had warned: gigantic public and private debt, a massive national government, entangling foreign alliances, a standing army, undeclared war in the form of military interventionism, the destruction of American agrarianism, and the [...]
From historian Dumas Malone, we can, if we wish, begin to discern the real Jefferson. And that Jefferson is, in the broad outline of American history, identifiable in no other way than as a conservative. The Sage of Monticello, by Dumas Malone, Volume Six of Jefferson and His Time In 1809 Thomas Jefferson yielded up [...]
Recommended essays regarding Mr. Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) on The Imaginative Conservative: Looking for Mr. Jefferson by Clyde Wilson Thomas Jefferson’s Birthday by Clyde Wilson Thomas Jefferson & the American Declaration of Independence by Ross Lence Thomas Jefferson, Conservative by Clyde Wilson Jefferson Was Right by Joseph Sobran Calhoun, Jefferson, and Popular Rule by Lee Cheek The [...]