James Madison is justly celebrated for his frequently stated opinion that “all power in just and free Government is derived from compact.” But Madison’s view is not endorsed by all purported champions of the founders. A recent article, “Our Unwritten Constitution: Orestes Brownson and the Foundation of American Liberty,” published as part of
In my last response to Mark Pulliam, I challenged him to find a single statement from a prominent American Founder who denied that the Declaration of Independence provided the authoritative source of the Constitution’s authority. So far he has failed to do so, but he has forwarded to me a contemporary article that
Although I don’t believe I have ever seen so many errors in such a short essay, the principal error in Mark Pulliam’s response to my recent piece, “Don’t Read the Constitution the Way Robert Bork Did” is this: If one claims to adhere to the original intentions of the Founders, one must first
In two recent articles (“Phony Constitutionalists Despise This Freshman Senator” and “The Pernicious Notion of ‘Unenumerated Rights’”) Mark Pulliam attempts to construct a defense of original intent jurisprudence. His attempt is vitiated by one glaring defect: he is utterly mistaken about the first principles of the Constitution. He invites us to “Recall our first
Secretary of State John Kerry in May 2016 advised his fellow citizens to prepare themselves for a borderless world. A borderless world would, of course, be a world without sovereign nation-states and consequently a world without the exclusive citizenship that attaches to what our Declaration of Independence called the “separate and equal nations”
Editor’s Note: The following is an open letter to the editor of the Los Angeles Times, penned by our good friend and contributor, Edward J. Erler. A Letter to the Los Angeles Times To the Editors, Security experts warn us that terrorism has become an "inevitable reality" of the modern world and
Tuesday’s Supreme Court ruling represents another victory for Progressive liberalism’s “post-constitutionalism.” The case, Moore v. Texas, affirmed prior holdings that mentally challenged individuals cannot be subjected to the death penalty without violating the Eighth Amendment’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishment.” The case involved a death penalty case from Texas involving a conviction for murder
The temporary nationwide injunctions placed on President Trump’s most recent executive order, issued March 6 (“Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States”) by two federal district courts are the latest skirmishes in progressive liberalism’s war against the idea of the sovereign nation-state and the exclusive citizenship that attaches to “separate and
