Founding Federalist: The Life of Oliver Ellsworth by Michael C. Toth When American schoolchildren study the Constitutional Convention, they typically learn a few names—Madison, Randolph, Patterson, Washington—and few main events—the formation of the legislature, the Three-Fifths Compromise, and the creation of the presidency. The first event is usually called “The Great Compromise” that melded Madison’s [...]
What made the American Republic so uniquely superior to all other previous and existing forms of government? The Founding Fathers created “the model republic,” Orestes Brownson wrote, because “they suffered themselves in all their positive substantial work to be governed by reality, not by theories and speculations.” The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny, by [...]
John Adams was a true statesman, committed to republican principles, conducting himself in a virtuous manner that served the public good. Without him, it is entirely possible that there would be no United States of America. What kind of person is worthy of being called a “statesman”? What type of character, what accomplishments, what life [...]
Buckley: William F. Buckley, Jr. and the Rise of American Conservatism, by Carl T. Bogus. Bloomsbury Press, 2011. William F. Buckley, Jr. continues to stand as the representative conservative of the postwar era. Bon vivant, former CIA operative, heir to an oil fortune—not to mention best-selling writer of spy novels and founding editor of National Review, [...]
Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays, by Michael Oakeshott. New York: Basic Books, 1962. 333 pp. [rev ed. Liberty Fund, 1991] It is a pleasure to have Professor Oakeshott on my side, even though there are moments when I have trouble in understanding just where his verbal missile is directed. Curiously, his address in Madrid [...]
The Pro-Growth Progressive: An Economic Strategy for Shared Prosperity, by Gene Sperling The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, by Benjamin Friedman In the 1970s, the Republican Party was known by another nickname than the Grand Old Party. It was also known as “the tax collector of the welfare state.” Hard as it may be for [...]
John Randolph of Roanoke: A Study in American Politics, by Russell Kirk. For Southerners of my antique persuasion, Russell Kirk’s John Randolph of Roanoke is a locus classicus. And for most American conservatives, it is a work of decisive importance, a path leading into a neglected portion of our common patrimony, a portion now not well [...]
The Tenth Amendment and State Sovereignty: Constitutional History and Contemporary Issues, Mark R. Killenbeck (Editor) The Tenth Amendment can best be described as the last visible battlefield breastwork of the constitutional struggle between the forces of centralization and those of localism. But just as military advances have made nineteenth-century earthen breastworks mostly obsolete, so, too, have [...]
Under the listings of Shakespeare, the Internet abounds in essays, reviews, texts, and comments, almost anything one can imagine about his works and about works explaining his works. My Viking Edition of Shakespeare comes to 1,471 pages. I suspect that at least that number of pages of new materials about Shakespeare appears almost every month. [...]
Adventures of an Accidental Sociologist: How to Explain the World Without Becoming a Bore, by Peter L. Berger. Prometheus Books, 2011. Sociology was invented in the nineteenth century by the French philosopher Auguste Comte, who envisioned a “science of society” in which religion was replaced by rationalism and the polity was ruled by experts. Comte intended the [...]
Why Conservation Is Failing and How It Can Regain Ground, by Eric T. Freyfogle. Yale University Press Environmental conservation has moved from the margin to the political mainstream in recent decades. However, despite the high profile and widespread public support of environmental issues, conservation policy has failed to achieve many of its goals. Eric Freyfogle, environmental [...]
The Agnostic Age: Law, Religion, and the Constitution, by Paul Horwitz Any attempt at fairness in evaluating The Agnostic Age: Law, Religion, and the Constitution must start by recognizing the light touch and good will Paul Horwitz brings to a topic fraught with ponderous and cryptic argumentation, punctuated by outright acrimony. If the book fails [...]
Conservatism Revisited: The Revolt Against Ideology, by Peter Viereck. With a major new study of Peter Viereck and Conservatism by Claes G. Ryn Developments in recent American politics have raised questions about the intellectual roots and philosophical depth of conservatism. The direction of American foreign policy, for example, has inspired debates about the meaning of American [...]
Of the voluminous corpus of Russell Kirk’s writings, no small amount concerns the subject of education. Kirk counted in his memoirs that over a span of five decades he had authored “some hundreds of essays, articles, and newspaper columns,” as well as three books devoted to the subject. In particular, his fortnightly page in the [...]