Remembering the 1920s

By |2015-01-20T16:16:05-06:00January 20th, 2015|Categories: Economics, History, Ludwig von Mises|Tags: , |

It is a cliché that if we do not study the past we are condemned to repeat it. Almost equally certain, however, is that if there are lessons to be learned from a historical episode, the political class will draw all the wrong ones—and often deliberately so. Far from viewing the past as a potential [...]

How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization

By |2022-07-23T21:23:33-05:00April 17th, 2014|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Catholicism, Christianity, Western Civilization|Tags: , |

As much as a Catholic might want to embrace Thomas Woods’ thesis that the Church built Western Civilization, one must pause at such a statement. Rather than having built or having destroyed Western civilization, the Church sanctified what it found and gave the West new life. How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, by Thomas [...]

How to Read the Constitution

By |2014-04-25T09:57:28-05:00March 18th, 2014|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Books, Constitution|Tags: , , |

The Founding Fathers Guide to the Constitution, Brion McClanahan, Regnery, 262 pages The two key arguments against bothering with constitutional restraints on government are “who knows” and “who cares”: we can’t know what the Constitution means, and we shouldn’t care even if we did. In The Founding Fathers Guide to the Constitution, historian Brion McClanahan [...]

A Review of James Madison and the Making of America

By |2014-01-05T14:42:08-06:00April 23rd, 2012|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Books, James Madison, Kevin Gutzman, Republicanism|Tags: |

Kevin Gutzman’s James Madison and the Making of America takes what we thought was a familiar story and gives it a fresh and important interpretation that challenges old orthodoxies and helps us better understand important episodes in American history. For instance, proper credit for the world-historic Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom is at last granted [...]

American Conservatism and the Old Republic

By |2014-03-28T14:32:06-05:00July 4th, 2011|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Republicanism, Thomas Jefferson|Tags: , |

As some renditions of American history would have it, the conservative pedigree in the United States begins with, or at the very least includes, Alexander Hamilton and his followers. In fact, the typical lineages are given thus: Federalist-Whig-Republican on the one hand and Jeffersonian-Jacksonian-Populist-New Deal on the other. This breakdown of the American political tradition [...]

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