The Empire That Never Was
America cannot survive on its large-C Constitution alone. It needs a small-c constitution, too, a shared spirit of common purpose and ritual. And for that, we must become friends again.
First Principles
Tocqueville in Arabia: The Anxieties of the Democratic Age
From the vantage point of the aristocratic soul, the truant’s freedom offered by the Democratic Age is initially both temptation and horror.
Franklin’s Warning: A Republic . . . If You Can Keep It
Benjamin Franklin’s famous warning links government to the character of the people.
Our Digital Panopticon
How digital surveillance is gaining power for the biomedical security state.
Religious Liberty and the American Founding
The natural rights approach leaves to the people, via majoritarian political institutions, authority over church-state matters that many on the Left and Right would prefer they didn’t possess.
The Locke-Box
For Locke, it is property all the way down. But property is not the be-all and end-all for the founders.
Frederick Douglass: The Agitator as Statesman
Statesmanship, as Douglass understood and practiced it, consisted in a tireless, courageous, hopeful, and prudent struggle to recover America’s national promise.
A Christmas Meditation on the Words of the Gospel
The story of Jesus is not like the story of man. It is instead the key that opens the story of man.
Squinting at Leo Strauss: Impartiality and the Art of Writing
A response to some reviews of The Soul of Politics: Harry V. Jaffa and the Fight for America .
Rhetorical vs. Historical Distinctions
It may be fair to assume that Victor Davis Hanson’s attack on the “blue Confederate states” is a political exercise, not the professional scholarship he offers elsewhere.
Natural Law Liberalism—An Ideology for the Republican Party
Unless Republicans anchor their political value system in the absolute truth of inalienable individual rights granted by God the Creator, the Left will eventually win.
‘We Will Not Pay’
On the eve of the Revolution, tensions in Boston mount between the American patriots defending their rights and the royal governor in Massachusetts.
Conservatism, Inc.’s Hypocrisy Shines Brightly
Conservatives proclaim the supremacy of self-interest, of anti-social, atomizing individualism even as it facilitates the consolidation of control over our lives by a collective of managerial elites.
We Need Institutions More Than Ever
In the spirit of a new consensus, let us rethink the importance of our institutions and recommit to fortifying them.