The Value of Virtue
I recently dusted off an old friend: Gordon S. Wood’s The Creation of the American Republic 1776 – 1787*. His research in the newspapers, pamphlets and sermons of the Revolutionary… Read more »
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Montesquieu on Education in Republics and Despotisms
While Charles de Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws was an oft-cited source during the federal convention of 1787, his observations weren’t limited to the balance of powers in government…. Read more »
The John Birch Society vs. Article V
Near the core of John Birch Society opposition to an Article V Convention of the States is mistrust of the American people. Dig further and one cannot avoid the conclusion… Read more »
Article V Blog Dedication
To my chagrin, I have often used a term this year which I haven’t defined since my first blog post last September: This blog is dedicated to the renewal of… Read more »
Our Noble Constitution
The triumph of the federal convention of 1787 is that in raising a standard to which the wise and honest could repair, it also raised one that met the threefold… Read more »
The Spirit of Governments
In a 1792 column in the National Gazette, James Madison* briefly touched on Charles de Montesquieu’s three operative principles of government: fear in despotisms, honor in monarchies, and virtue in… Read more »
Great Crimes, No Punishment
We honor our Framers as the greatest lawgivers in history, yet as a society we freeze at the thought of removing perhaps the greatest law-thief in history, Barack Obama. The… Read more »
Our Noble Declaration of Independence
Among the reasons I enjoy Independence Day is that it makes Leftists squirm. They despise the American Revolution. If they could, their scotus judges would gut the Declaration as thoroughly… Read more »
Progressing the American Republic
The framing generation of 1787 agonized over how to form free government across an extensive territory that avoided the classic problem of republics: their degeneration into democracies in which various… Read more »
Machiavelli on Religion and Republics
In his Discourses on Livy, Niccolò Machiavelli devoted several chapters to the importance of religion to the long-lived Roman Republic. There are lessons here for America 2016. Numa Pompilius, successor… Read more »