Prudence as Excellence: Edmund Burke, Abraham Lincoln, & the Problem of Greatness

By |2022-03-30T09:12:00-05:00March 29th, 2022|Categories: Abraham Lincoln, Edmund Burke, Virtue|Tags: |

In a democratic age, how can greatness come to be? Edmund Burke offers a way forward: prudence as a form of excellence. Our conference is subtitled “equality and the survival of heroism.” My concern is the survival of prudence amid the longing for heroism—in particular, the misalignment between ambition and circumstance, the persistent pursuit of [...]

Madison’s Metronome: The Sovereign Physician of Our Passions

By |2021-11-03T20:00:01-05:00November 3rd, 2021|Categories: Books, Constitution, Featured, James Madison, Timeless Essays|

To the extent that James Madison’s democratic theory of "temporal republicanism" depends on time, the virtue on which it hinges is patience. If so, fundamental features of Madison’s democratic thought stand in tension with a twenty-first-century ethos of instant gratification and communication. Twelve-year-olds do not read Michel de Montaigne anymore, much less take notes. James [...]

Conservatism and Our Constitutional Inheritance

By |2020-03-03T17:29:07-06:00September 8th, 2019|Categories: Congress, Conservatism, Constitution, Donald Trump, Populism, Presidency, Timeless Essays|

The constitutional inheritance is not merely a gift to be expended or consumed; it is a responsibility to be stewarded. This sense of intergenerational obligation—debts to the past and future—is the most solid and powerful grounding for originalism and respect for constitutional form. Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords our readers the opportunity [...]

Conservatism and Our Constitutional Inheritance

By |2019-07-18T15:53:31-05:00September 16th, 2017|Categories: Congress, Conservatism, Donald Trump, Featured, Populism, Presidency|

The constitutional inheritance is not merely a gift to be expended or consumed; it is a responsibility to be stewarded. This sense of intergenerational obligation—debts to the past and future—is the most solid and powerful grounding for originalism and respect for constitutional form… The essential question confronting American conservatism is what, precisely, it aspires to conserve. [...]

The Imaginative Politics of Daniel Patrick Moynihan

By |2021-10-06T15:03:11-05:00January 11th, 2016|Categories: Edmund Burke, Featured, Government, History, Politics|

Contemporary politics leaves little room for so broad and imaginative an account of politics as Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s. He defies labels, which is to say why our contemporary labels—as narrow as our imagination—defy him. That contemporary politics leaves little room for so broad and imaginative an account of politics as Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s is evidence [...]

American Burke: The Uncommon Liberalism of Daniel Patrick Moynihan

By |2021-10-06T14:56:17-05:00January 5th, 2016|Categories: Edmund Burke, Featured, History, Politics|

Touched by experience with a sense of the tragic in politics, Daniel Patrick Moynihan nonetheless clung to a stubborn optimism about its possibilities. But those possibilities were bounded by a defining feature of Moynihan’s politics: limitation. There were limits to what government could do and, more important, limits to how it should attempt to do [...]

Presidential Power and the War on Terror: Whence Congress?

By |2014-01-28T20:30:42-06:00February 16th, 2013|Categories: Politics, Terrorism, War|Tags: |

Sunday’s New York Times carries a less than astonishing report, following the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s hearings on John O. Brennan’s nomination to be Director of Central Intelligence, that President Obama’s terrorism policies have turned out to be remarkably similar to his predecessor’s. “Obama’s Turn,” the headline runs, “in Bush’s Bind.” Bind? The suggestion [...]

The War on Terror and the Quest for Community

By |2014-01-16T22:24:46-06:00September 2nd, 2012|Categories: Community, Conservatism, Foreign Affairs, Politics, Robert Nisbet, War|Tags: |

There will be ample disputation at this week’s and next’s presidential nominating conventions, but one point is virtually sure to unite them: a rhetorical commitment to the “War on Terror” and, particularly, to the troops fighting it. Already, Paul Ryan has offered up the obligatory salute to the troops who have “defended our freedom”—which is, [...]

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