True Fourth

By |2023-07-03T16:17:35-05:00July 3rd, 2023|Categories: American Founding, Freedom, Glenn Arbery, Independence Day, Liberty, Patriotism, Timeless Essays, Wyoming Catholic College|

Why is the true Fourth such a powerful image of liberty? Because the things that most deepen us and rouse us are dangerous. An appetite for the real good means being willing to face danger, and the whole point of the liberty we celebrate is that we learn to handle danger, to face it responsibly, [...]

The Day Rick Monday Saved the American Flag

By |2023-06-13T18:07:21-05:00June 13th, 2023|Categories: American Republic, Baseball, Independence Day, Stephen M. Klugewicz, Timeless Essays|

On April 25, 1976, the year of the American Bicentennial celebrations, Chicago Cubs outfielder Rick Monday saved an American flag from being burned by two protestors who had trespassed onto the field during a game at Dodger Stadium. As the bottom of the fourth inning got underway, the protesters placed the flag in left-center field [...]

A Song for America

By |2023-07-04T22:50:29-05:00July 21st, 2022|Categories: American Republic, Christianity, Culture, Glenn Arbery, Independence Day, Liberty, Music, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays, Wyoming Catholic College|

Katherine Lee Bates’ “America the Beautiful” conveys the incalculable beauty of virtue that America can exhibit by exercising self-control and taking on the high responsibilities of self-rule. Our prayer is that the anomalies of this year do not overcome us, and that our nation will recall itself and find again the greatness of soul that [...]

Did Edmund Burke Support the American Revolution?

By |2022-07-08T16:52:38-05:00July 8th, 2022|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Bradley J. Birzer, Conservatism, Declaration of Independence, Edmund Burke, History, Independence Day, Robert Nisbet, Russell Kirk, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays|

Many conservatives have assumed that Edmund Burke was opposed to the American Revolution. It is, to my mind, an erroneous assumption. “Burke broke his agentship and went publicly silent on the American cause once war broke out,” Robert Nisbet claimed in his most definitive analysis of Edmund Burke, written and published in 1985. His fellow [...]

A Healthy Respect for Limits: Recovering the American Founding

By |2023-07-03T16:24:32-05:00July 7th, 2022|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Declaration of Independence, Independence Day, Mark Malvasi, Timeless Essays|

The Founding Fathers and their heirs wanted to establish and maintain a prosperous republic, yet they welcomed limitations on prosperity as much as they had welcomed restraints on power. This healthy respect for limits offers a way to recover the political and moral realism that contemporary Americans have lost. Somewhere I recall reading the poet [...]

Thomas Jefferson & the Declaration of Independence: The Power of a Free People

By |2023-07-03T16:27:40-05:00July 3rd, 2021|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Declaration of Independence, Featured, Independence Day, Political Science Reviewer, Thomas Jefferson, Timeless Essays|

One of America’s most cherished symbols, of course, is the American Declaration of Independence, and its Promethean author, Thomas Jefferson—a document and a man whom subsequent generations have blurred together in a myth of no mean proportion. It is the immediate task of this essay to unravel that myth so we will know what we [...]

Memories of the Fourth of July

By |2020-07-04T13:03:58-05:00July 4th, 2020|Categories: Culture, Freedom, Independence Day|

Like most Americans, I have wonderful memories of family picnics on the Fourth of July. When grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins and various other relatives got together we’d have seventy-five or a hundred people. Picnics on the farm meant setting up big plank tables under the large trees on the front lawn. It was a [...]

Happy Birthday, America!

By |2023-07-03T16:20:26-05:00July 3rd, 2020|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Bradley J. Birzer, Declaration of Independence, Independence Day, Senior Contributors|

Happy birthday, America! The world wouldn’t be the same without you. It would be poorer, less ethical, less stable, and less humane had you never come into existence. Whatever America’s faults, her successes outweigh them all. As protestors around the United States tear down statues, brutally beat rosary warriors, attack neighborhoods, threaten the destruction of [...]

In God We Trust: How to Remedy the American Crisis

By |2021-02-20T21:35:34-06:00July 3rd, 2020|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Christianity, Declaration of Independence, Independence Day|

Ours is a nation founded and shaped primarily by European immigrants of Protestant Christian persuasion. The first pilgrims came over to spread the faith of Christ and live their Bible-based beliefs. When the settlements grew and spread and formed into 13 colonies, the charters of each were specifically Christian, e. g., "to the glory of [...]

July 4, 1776: Congress Adopts the Declaration of Independence

By |2020-07-03T15:41:32-05:00July 3rd, 2020|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, American Revolution, Declaration of Independence, History, Independence Day, Thomas Jefferson|

The adoption of the Declaration of Independence of “the thirteen united States of America” on July 4, 1776 formally ended a process that had been set in motion almost as soon as colonies were established in what became British North America. The early settlers, once separated physically from the British Isles by an immense ocean, [...]

Three Things to Ponder This Fourth of July

By |2020-07-03T14:40:09-05:00July 3rd, 2020|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Culture, Independence Day, John Horvat, Modernity|

In times of crisis like our own, thoughts about the meaning of life have a chance to appear. As our success and prosperity slowly end, these thoughts can provide us with the material to ponder. This Fourth of July, let us observe the holiday by pondering our uncertain future. This Fourth of July is different [...]

“They Live Forever in the American Constellation”: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson

By |2023-07-03T16:40:56-05:00February 10th, 2020|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Declaration of Independence, History, Independence Day, John Adams, Primary Documents, Thomas Jefferson|

Adams and Jefferson are no more. They are dead. But how little is there of the great and good which can die! To their country they yet live, and live for ever. Their stars have now joined the American Constellation. Beneath this illumination let us walk the course of life, and at its close devoutly [...]

“What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”

By |2020-07-04T13:01:34-05:00July 19th, 2019|Categories: American Republic, Declaration of Independence, History, Independence Day, Slavery|

This is the 4th of July. It is the birthday of your National Independence, and of your political freedom. This, to you, is what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God. Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What, to the American slave, is [...]

Land of Hope

By |2020-06-26T16:05:09-05:00July 4th, 2019|Categories: American Republic, Freedom, Glenn Arbery, Hope, Independence Day, Senior Contributors, Wyoming Catholic College|

It’s always important to remember that the Founders of our country did not predicate their arguments for independence on some idea of liberty as the release from all constraints of law or qualms of conscience, but on real, reasoned understandings of the duties that come with freedom and the gratitude that binds us to the [...]

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