A Big Idea: Reorganizing the 50 States

By |2024-12-19T09:38:36-06:00December 18th, 2024|Categories: American Republic, Government, Satire|

It’s morning again in America. Trump has reclaimed the presidency, and a popular vote majority supercharges his mandate. But morning means it’s time to get to work. While we may now be unburdened by the disaster of a Harris administration, big changes are necessary. For the past sixteen years, we’ve heard the fantasies of the [...]

The Regrettable Rise of “Right-Wing Wokeism”

By |2024-12-09T14:08:47-06:00December 8th, 2024|Categories: American Republic, Conservatism, History, Patriotism, Wokeism|

The greatness of the American myth is that it is mostly real. Enough of the faux-conservatives, these woke rightists, judging America as not worth saving and smearing our heroes as tyrants or war criminals. On December 3, 2024, James Lindsay, rightish provocateur, revealed that he had “very lightly edited” “several thousand words straight out of” [...]

Thoughts on the Declaration of Independence

By |2024-12-01T18:38:21-06:00December 1st, 2024|Categories: American Revolution, Bradley J. Birzer, Declaration of Independence, Senior Contributors|

The two principal writers (Jefferson the author and Adams the orator) of the Declaration died on its fiftieth anniversary. This has become a sort of cute, trivial point to us two hundred years later. But to the Americans of the day, it was astounding, surely confirmation that God smiled upon the Declaration and upon America. [...]

C.S. Lewis, Langston Hughes, & the Haunting of America

By |2024-11-28T16:49:00-06:00November 28th, 2024|Categories: American Republic, C.S. Lewis, Literature, Myth, Poetry, Timeless Essays|

All nations need reminders that even their best ideals, though worth defending, do not earn them chosen nation status. Reading C.S. Lewis’ “That Hideous Strength” and Langston Hughes’ “Let America Be America Again” in light of each other could rouse those in need of both a restoration of confidence in the goodness of the American [...]

The Year Washington (Almost) Canceled Thanksgiving

By |2024-11-27T13:03:37-06:00November 27th, 2024|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, History, Michael J. Connolly, Senior Contributors, Slavery, South, Thanksgiving|

The creation of Thanksgiving was no uncontested process but a fight emerging from antebellum crises over slavery and American nationalism. In November 1859, a Washington, DC alderman from Capitol Hill violently opposed the mayor’s request to declare a Thanksgiving public holiday. By this point, annual celebrations had become traditional and twenty-five governors already proclaimed the [...]

Signing of the Mayflower Compact

By |2024-11-21T10:22:25-06:00November 20th, 2024|Categories: American Republic, Christianity, Civilization, Government, History, Mayflower Compact, Timeless Essays|

In the name of God, amen. We whose names are under written… [h]aving undertaken for the Glory of God, and advancement of the christian [sic] faith, and the honour of our King and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia; do by these presents solemnly and mutually, in [...]

A Reading of the Gettysburg Address

By |2024-11-18T18:08:52-06:00November 18th, 2024|Categories: Abraham Lincoln, Alexis de Tocqueville, American Republic, Civil War, Declaration of Independence, E.B., Essential, Eva Brann, In Honor of Eva Brann at 90 Series, Senior Contributors, St. John's College, Timeless Essays|

Liberal education ought to be less a matter of becoming well-read than a matter of learning to read well, of acquiring arts of awareness, the interpretative or “trivial” arts. Some works, written by men who are productive masters of these arts, are exemplary for their interpretative application. Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is such a text. Liberal [...]

What ‘Firing Line’ Taught Me About Our Modern Democracy

By |2024-11-13T14:31:27-06:00November 13th, 2024|Categories: American Republic, Conservatism, Democracy, Politics, Television, William F. Buckley Jr.|

What did William F. Buckley’s "Firing Line" teach me about our modern democracy? Simply this: It is not too late to reclaim intelligent and competent, moral and visionary political conversation. Nor is it too late to right the direction of our flagging democracy. The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous [...]

Is “Americanism” a Heresy?

By |2024-11-07T20:29:05-06:00November 7th, 2024|Categories: American Republic, Catholicism, History, Russell Kirk|

Orestes Brownson believed that there must reside a sanction for justice and order which cannot be found apart from religious principles. Without such sanctions, we fight the same battles in political season after political season under the various ideologies intending to make America great again; but only the standards of those “permanent things” taught by [...]

America: Devolution, Revolution, or Renewal?

By |2024-11-03T18:43:30-06:00November 3rd, 2024|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Conservatism, History, Politics, Revolution, Timeless Essays|

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. [...]

Moral Questions Regarding Voting

By |2024-11-01T17:19:27-05:00November 1st, 2024|Categories: American Republic, Catholicism, Politics, Religion|

As Election Day approaches, many have raised serious moral questions regarding how to vote. Sadly, in our great nation, we confront a situation in which both major political parties espouse certain agenda which are flagrantly contrary to the most fundamental tenets of the moral law, agenda against the inviolable dignity of innocent and defenseless human [...]

“Philip Dru: Administrator,” a Story of Tomorrow

By |2024-10-23T20:41:18-05:00October 23rd, 2024|Categories: American Republic, Books, History, Politics|

To what extent Colonel Edward House’s novel "Philip Dru" contributed to the Wilsonian transformation of the Democratic party will likely never be known. But we do know that Woodrow Wilson read the book, brought House to the White House, and relied on House for advice and companionship. Philip Dru: Administrator - A Story of Tomorrow, [...]

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