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 [...]
It is not surprising that in the political field, the traditional form of Christianity has not accepted the logical conclusions of that democracy which asserts that man can do what he likes, since there is no power greater than man. In that sense, Catholicism has never been democratic in spirit. The Persistence of Order, Volume [...]
If we consider the Founders’ arguments for the Constitution, we find not only that they intended it to be undemocratic, but that they would defend even its most undemocratic elements on “popular” grounds. What might appear to the partisans of democracy today as outdated roadblocks to efficient government are for the Founders politically salutary forms [...]
According to Tocqueville, a new political science must account for both the immediate and the universal, the moment and the eternal. When we fail to understand the choice that God has given us with democracy—that is, a science to guide, attenuate, and hone democracy—the baser instincts will rise to the fore. Tocqueville breaks his own [...]
The American Democratic party has not ever been and certainly is not now truly democratic. The process by which President Biden’s apparent disability has been concealed and the method party leaders are using to replace him is more reminiscent of Plato’s lying guardians than it is of Aristotle’s democrats. Introduction The ancient Greeks gave the [...]
Democracy requires compromise, and compromise requires the two virtues lacking most in American society–prudence and humility. What hope is there, then, now that technology and social media have only deepened the virtue deficit? In October 2012, during a televised presidential debate President Barack Obama earned laughs and pleased pundits when he mocked his opponent, Governor [...]
The importance of George Ticknor lies in contrasts, which bring into relief another America. As an old Federalist who worked to undergird volatile American democracy with traditions, Ticknor and his Brahmin compatriots “wove a tapestry of conviction and hope, doubt and despair, which became a conservative testament.” In July 1836, a European statesman and an [...]
Three proposed ends of liberal education — career, democracy, and a free mind — do not pierce the dome of the bourgeois workaday world. Let us begin anew with a question: “How can liberal education pierce the dome that encloses the bourgeois workaday world?" This essay was originally delivered at Magdalen College on October 25, [...]
Edgar Allan Poe vigorously denounced the Jeffersonian ideal of democracy. He had no sympathy with abstract political notions such as those which had produced liberal republican theory in America and elsewhere. Like Edmund Burke, Poe was highly suspicious of the “well-constructed Republic.” The opinion has been often stated that Edgar Allan Poe was bizarre and [...]
Charles Eliot Norton is unknown today outside historians of literature or education, but between Fort Sumter and Teddy Roosevelt he dominated Anglo-American literature and Harvard lecture halls. Beginning with optimism, in the years following Appomattox his perspective darkened into fears that American democracy encouraged selfishness, corruption, and the hatred of excellence. In the 1890s, Harvard [...]
Local governmental bodies, and particularly school boards, have always provided a forum for direct democracy, in which citizens can openly voice their opinions. To restrict access to or participation in these forums is not only to curtail speech and political association rights, but also to substantially restrict the very nature of democracy and federalism in [...]
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 [...]
Because of the strong secular faith instilled in us by education, most of us trust that science and technology, democracy, and capitalism, the three legs of Modernity, can bring about only good ends and fail to see that these three triumphs of humankind can diminish the human person. With the publication of the book The [...]
Niccolo Machiavelli may help modern man to think more clearly about power and prudence, and to remember that the world is a dangerous place where all is not as it seems. An argument can be made that Niccolo Machiavelli’s sinister reputation is unjust. This is not to gloss over the very deep flaws in the [...]