What “The Federalist” Really Says

By |2023-10-27T06:03:11-05:00October 26th, 2023|Categories: Abraham Lincoln, American Founding, American Republic, Equality, Featured, Federalist, Federalist Papers, James Madison, John Locke, Timeless Essays, Willmoore Kendall|

It is from careful textual analysis of “The Federalist” that the basic symbols of the American political tradition, and indeed the conservative tradition, may be found. III In his analysis of the Socrates of the Apology, Willmoore Kendall was hinting strongly at the probability that the contemporary John Stuart Mill-Karl Popper school in the United [...]

John Locke: The Harmony of Liberty & Virtue

By |2023-08-28T18:01:13-05:00August 28th, 2023|Categories: American Republic, Civil Society, Featured, Federalist Papers, Freedom, John Locke, Leo Strauss, Liberty, Philosophy, Timeless Essays, Virtue|

Government remains limited in civil society because God gave man the ability, through work and reason, to subdue the earth and thereby improve his life by the use of pri­vate property. Understanding Locke John Locke is one of the few major philoso­phers who can be used to provide a theoret­ical and moral foundation for American [...]

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 [...]

On Christian Freedom in America

By |2020-08-13T16:23:52-05:00August 15th, 2020|Categories: American Republic, Christianity, Freedom, Government, John Locke, Politics, Rights|

What makes the secular and the Christian outlook on freedom and appetites different is the direction of our gaze. Contemporary secular freedom, as expressed in America today, directs us to look inward, toward our appetites. Our Christian freedom, on the other hand, directs us to look outward, toward those whom we can love. Polemarchus has [...]

A Declaration of Interdependence: Rereading the American Declaration of 1776

By |2020-07-08T10:46:09-05:00July 8th, 2020|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Christianity, Declaration of Independence, Equality, Freedom, Government, History, John Locke, Rights|

While the Declaration of Independence may be linked in the popular imagination with notions of unfettered freedom and autonomy, in reality, the Declaration is greatly concerned with relationships, interrelationships, mutuality, and obligations. These relationships are governed by preexisting, inalienable natural rights and justice. In the beginning, the title was not the Declaration of Independence. Though [...]

John Locke’s “A Letter Concerning Toleration” and the Liberal Regime

By |2020-08-28T17:15:24-05:00June 25th, 2020|Categories: American Republic, Books, Civil Society, Government, John Locke, Politics, Social Institutions|

The political situation in the United States offers an excellent and necessary opportunity to examine our ideas concerning toleration. We should turn to John Locke, who presents an argument for toleration worth pondering in a time when few are giving toleration, let alone free speech, freedom of association, or liberty, serious thought. John Locke’s A [...]

John Locke on “The Reasonableness of Christianity”

By |2020-08-28T17:10:38-05:00March 14th, 2019|Categories: Books, Christianity, John Locke, Morality, Philosophy, Reason, Religion, Theology|

A primary theme that runs throughout The Reasonableness of Christianity is John Locke’s belief that men who attempt to understand natural law and morality through their faculty of reason alone often fail at their task. But why is it that reason alone, also according to Locke, can explain Revelation? The question this essay poses might seem somewhat straightforward: [...]

Understanding Voegelin’s Critique of Locke

By |2019-11-21T19:44:32-06:00November 30th, 2018|Categories: American Republic, Books, Democracy, Eric Voegelin, John Locke, Philosophy, Political Philosophy|

No matter how conservative intellectuals try, they just do not seem able to escape John Locke. Jonah Goldberg’s well-received Suicide of the West proudly called America’s Declaration of Independence “echoes of” the great English Enlightenment philosopher John Locke, saying U.S. history was “more Locke than anything Locke imagined.”  He inspired “a government but not a state”: a government with power [...]

Romano Guardini & the Dissolution of Western Culture

By |2023-03-07T08:46:06-06:00August 27th, 2017|Categories: Books, Christianity, Culture, Featured, History, John Locke, Leviathan, Philosophy, Romano Guardini, Timeless Essays, Western Civilization|

The Renaissance and Enlightenment thinkers hollowed Western culture out of the very spiritual body that held it together: the mystical body of Christ… Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords readers the opportunity to join Wayne Allen as he explores Romano Guardini’s understanding of the dissolution of Western culture via the de-spiritualization of the West, [...]

Edmund Burke on Constitutions & Natural Law

By |2019-06-11T16:10:20-05:00September 20th, 2016|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Conservatism, Edmund Burke, Edmund Burke series by Bradley Birzer, Featured, John Locke, Natural Law, Natural Rights Tradition|

The real goal of political society, Edmund Burke claimed in his arguments against the French Revolutionaries, is not to create new laws or new rules, but “to secure the religion, laws, and liberties, that had been long possessed.” If one creates a law out of theory, he will explain much later in his Reflections on the [...]

Justice: An Art Form?

By |2019-11-19T17:25:42-06:00September 3rd, 2016|Categories: Conservatism, Featured, John Locke, Justice, Plato, Russell Kirk, Virtue|

Calls for “social justice” have a bad habit of appearing in caricature: the throwback hippiedom of Occupy Wall Street, the race-baiting rallies of Al Sharpton and other hucksters, the abortion proponents who think the First Amendment was written to protect their “right” to dress up as genitalia. If ever “social justice” was a content-rich term, [...]

“Republican Government” According to John Adams

By |2021-10-29T12:14:40-05:00August 31st, 2016|Categories: American Republic, Featured, Great Books, History, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Adams, John Locke, Liberty, Natural Law, Philosophy, Political Science Reviewer, Republicanism|

John Adams wondered why men cannot live together “naturally” at peace, with the justice of their relations emerging immediately from the operation of reason in each individual. As elaborated thus far, natural law teaches that legitimate government is circumscribed by liberty in a dual sense: It derives from the consent of equally free individuals, and [...]

Determinism: Science Commits Suicide

By |2019-07-23T14:05:22-05:00June 10th, 2016|Categories: Aristotle, George Stanciu, John Locke, Plato, Science, St. John's College|

Despite the advent of relativity, quantum physics, and chaos theory, most scientists, including most physicists, intellectually inhabit the Newtonian Cosmos. In stark contrast to the Aristotelian Cosmos, where plants and animals possess an inner agency that causes them to emulate the Prime Mover, the Newtonian Cosmos is mechanical, where lifeless matter as well as animate [...]

The Lie of the Open Society

By |2022-02-23T11:00:53-06:00June 6th, 2016|Categories: Apology, Conservatism, Crito, Featured, Free Speech, John Locke, John Stuart Mill, Liberty, Plato, Willmoore Kendall|

II The related problems of “the public orthodoxy” and “the open society” were major concerns of  Willmoore Kendall throughout his professional career. In his reappraisal of John Locke in 1941, Kendall’s Locke emerged as an exponent of the public orthodoxy as expressed through the majority. As Kendall sees it, in Lockean thought, “In consenting to be a member [...]

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