President James Monroe and Republican Virtue

By |2023-04-27T16:29:11-05:00April 27th, 2023|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Bradley J. Birzer, Character, Government, History, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays|

Whatever his failings as an imaginative thinker, President James Monroe’s own convictions were rooted deeply in the spirit and the letter of the U.S. Constitution. As he entered the White House in March 1817, he had little (well, less) use for James Madison’s newfound love of nationalism. While he entered the presidency too late to [...]

Let Us Remember Lexington and Concord!

By |2023-04-18T15:02:34-05:00April 18th, 2023|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Bradley J. Birzer, Memorial Day, Timeless Essays|

Outnumbering the Lexington militia nearly ten to one, the British easily won the skirmish. But, symbolically, they lost. For at the moment the first Lexingtonian died, the American Republic was born. British Major Pitcarne took six companies of an advance team to scout out Lexington, Massachusetts, early morning, April 19, 1775. Behind him marched nearly [...]

A Republic If You Can Keep It: Religion, Civil Society, & America’s Founding

By |2023-04-16T17:46:30-05:00April 16th, 2023|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Civil Society, Morality, Religion, Timeless Essays, Virtue|

Though civil libertarians rightly point out the dangers of an unchecked government, they blissfully ignore the dangers of an unchecked, unrestrained populace. It is thus worthwhile to return to the founders and examine what role they desired religion and morality to play in their new Republic. The story goes that as Benjamin Franklin departed from [...]

M.E. Bradford’s Revolutionary “A Better Guide Than Reason”

By |2023-03-22T18:33:40-05:00March 22nd, 2023|Categories: Agrarianism, American Founding, American Republic, Books, John Dickinson, M. E. Bradford, Patrick Henry, South, Southern Agrarians, Thomas Jefferson, Timeless Essays|

No one who reads and digests “A Better Guide Than Reason” can fail to be revolutionized. We had thought that the great Southern political tradition—that of Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, John C. Calhoun, and the agrarians—was dead. Not so. A Better Guide Than Reason: Studies in the American Revolution by M.E. Bradford (241 pages, Sherwood Sugden [...]

Liberty & Republicanism: The Patrick Henry/Onslow Debate

By |2023-03-22T18:13:47-05:00March 22nd, 2023|Categories: John C. Calhoun, John Quincy Adams, Lee Cheek, Republicanism, Sean Busick, Timeless Essays|

The fiercely contested, yet inconclusive election of 1824 set the stage for one of the great debates of American political history. “Mr. Onslow, the ablest among Speakers of the House of Commons, used to say ‘It was a maxim he had often heard when he was a young man, from old and experienced members, that [...]

Madison’s “Extended Republic” and the Culture Wars

By |2023-03-15T18:04:01-05:00March 15th, 2023|Categories: American Republic, Culture War, Government, James Madison, Politics, Timeless Essays|

Centering our national politics on the culture wars is unhelpful because in the end it simply is not cut out for this. The optimal jurisdictional sphere for resolving many of our cultural battles will be localities, not states. Localities must be empowered boldly to operate and experiment within the immense gray areas that the questions [...]

The Ten Phases of Our Frontier Odyssey

By |2023-02-20T17:05:24-06:00February 20th, 2023|Categories: American Founding, American West, Bradley J. Birzer, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays|

The American frontier has served for centuries as a mythic stage as well as the perfect mirror, offering up a reflection—for good and for ill—of who and what we have been since the arrival of Columbus in 1492. One of my all-time favorite scholars, Don Lutz, had this to say about the symbols that form [...]

Luther Martin of Maryland & the Constitutional Convention

By |2023-02-19T21:31:02-06:00February 19th, 2023|Categories: Alexander Hamilton, American Founding, American Republic, Constitution, Featured, George Mason, George Washington, History, John Marshall, Timeless Essays|

Luther Martin understood human nature with a genius of sheer power, foresight, and brilliance. He believed that there can be no union without subsidiarity because without it, governments run with the cyclical and typical tyrannies of humankind. Forgotten Founder, Drunken Prophet, The Life of Luther Martin, by Bill Kauffman (Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2008) “Happiness is [...]

John Marshall: A Primer

By |2023-02-03T11:30:44-06:00February 3rd, 2023|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Bradley J. Birzer, Constitution, History, John Marshall, Senior Contributors, Supreme Court, Timeless Essays|

Perhaps more than any other figure in the early history of the American Republic, John Marshall shaped the Supreme Court as well as attitudes toward and understandings of the U.S. Constitution. John Marshall (September 24, 1755–July 6, 1835) was the fourth man to serve as the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, following [...]

Slavery and the Founding

By |2023-01-29T17:22:01-06:00January 29th, 2023|Categories: American Founding, Bradley J. Birzer, Senior Contributors, Slavery|

From the late 1660s until about 1763, slavery grew dramatically in the American colonies, but especially in the southern colonies. Then, between 1763 and 1793, the institution declined precipitously. Why? As an institution, slavery has one of the strangest of all histories. Though Africans were sold on American soil as early as 1619, chattel slavery [...]

America: Devolution, Revolution, or Renewal?

By |2023-01-16T15:39:14-06:00January 16th, 2023|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Conservatism, History, Politics, Revolution|

The truth is that for all its failings, America has provided more opportunity, security, and freedom to a group of people more diverse than any other nation in history. It is not because America is systemically rotten; but because it is foundationally good. Justice for all calls for those foundations to be defended, not destroyed. [...]

Robert Filmer & the American Experiment

By |2023-06-30T22:55:05-05:00January 9th, 2023|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Books, John Locke, Monarchy|

It seems unlikely that we can properly understand Lockean liberalism, much less pass an informed judgment upon it, without first meditating deeply upon the nemesis against whom Locke reacted: the divine-right monarchist, Sir Robert Filmer. Patriarcha: The Complete Political Works by Sir Robert Filmer (318 pages, Imperium Press, 2021) By and large, establishment conservatives defend [...]

George Washington: American Aurelius

By |2022-12-13T14:31:05-06:00December 13th, 2022|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Bradley J. Birzer, George Washington, Government, History, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays, Western Civilization|

In his own day, George Washington served as a pillar of Atlantis, recognized not only for his willingness to sacrifice his life for the great Republic, but also as the founder of the first serious Republic a weary world had witnessed in centuries. He deserves the title “the American Marcus Aurelius.” In his own day [...]

The Monroe Doctrine

By |2022-12-01T17:12:58-06:00December 1st, 2022|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Bradley J. Birzer, Europe, Foreign Affairs, History, John Quincy Adams, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays|

In his ideas regarding American foreign policy, James Monroe echoed both Washington and Jefferson, yet he had to worry about things neither of them did—in particular, European involvement in the affairs of the republics of the Western Hemisphere. His policy needed to follow the diplomatic thought of the previous administrations while also adapting to quickly [...]

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