To rebuild their movement and society, and to rebuild a viable culture, conservatives must embrace the conservative populism championed by two men: filmmaker Frank Capra and scholar Willmoore Kendall. Pursuing this path will be challenging, for populism has become a bogeyman for the powers that be. Last December, my wife and I motored a couple [...]
Whatever hells have been loosed upon the world, here in America and abroad, never forget that our ancestors, even pagan ones, called us to love and cherish that which is best. Every autumn, I have the grand privilege of teaching Socrates (the Apology, the Crito), Plato (Book VIII of the Republic, the Timaeus), and Aristotle [...]
We should learn from the political credo of the Venetians, who never forgot the history that had made them a special nation. To be a patriot is to embody our connection to the national bond through devotion to a "practice." It is good to be enthralled by dogmas of the quiet past, remembering who and [...]
While I see radical elements in the American Founding, I mostly see ways in which the Founding was conserving the best of the classical, medieval, and English past. The American Revolution, as such, did not turn the world upside down, but rather turned the world rightside back. This is part two of a series. See [...]
America, Daniel Mahoney writes, “remains a largely if only partially free country, though markedly less so than even in the recent past.” The danger we face is a declining understanding and assumption of the classical, biblical, and Christian categories of reality that ward off the insanity of an anti-human “Second Reality." The Persistence of the [...]
How did our traditional antipathy to third parties start in America, and what role have third parties played in our electoral history? Introduction Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo recently said that the Democratic party in America “is in a civil war.” The rise of the Democratic Socialist wing of the Democratic party and the [...]
Theodore Roosevelt contributed to creating what amounts to a fourth branch of government that now works against presidential power—or at least it works against the presidential power of one of our two major parties. Theodore Roosevelt could be turning over in his grave. And maybe Woodrow Wilson is spinning right along with him. Why? Well, [...]
Why exactly did Thomas Jefferson and Congress change John Locke’s famous declaration in favor of life, liberty, and property, to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Some, wrongly, have believed this to be a Jeffersonian attack on the notion of property. But, as Forrest and Ellen McDonald assure us in their own profound writings [...]
During his heyday, George W. Chadwick was the most respected American “serious” composer. His music conveys a feeling of old-time America in a way that most listeners can relate to and enjoy. If we are looking for a “usable past” in American music, there is no better place to start than G.W.C. How do we [...]
Whether in her present numerous agonies of disorder, America can transcend despair and rebuild her national character is doubtful—impossible in the minds of some. But one thing is certain: It can happen only by fidelity to the American experience of a transcending Christian authority, and fidelity to the finest of her social values, customs, and [...]
Put simply and starkly, Michael Anton sees little reason for optimism about America. How is a multi-ethnic society to be governed? The most common method is some form of one-man rule, whether “monarchist, Caesarist or tyrannical.” But America is different. Or is it? Michael Anton, Dispatches From the Late Republic: The Culture, Politics and Prophets [...]
G.K. Chesterton believed that only a firm and patriotic understanding of citizenship will keep the American experiment in shape and prevent it from melting into anarchy. If America does not insist that its people, and especially its immigrants, are citizens of the state, the state itself will melt into a formless, anarchic mess. As the [...]
If we reject the Christian account of liberty, the Declaration ceases to cohere. If we accept the Christian account of liberty, we can recover a Declaration that is both philosophic and poetic. The most famous sentence of the Declaration of Independence attempts to be a work of poetry and philosophy: “We hold these truths to [...]
Our continued success as a country is dependent upon a recovery of our appreciation of liberty, the original division of power, and the renewal of personal responsibility for perpetuating the regime. As we celebrate American Independence, it is appropriate to reflect upon the foundations of our liberty that the American Founding—especially the Founders' Declaration of [...]