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 »
Category: Uncategorized
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 »
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 »
On Sterile Politics, Christianity and Liberty
I was a registered Libertarian for twelve years. While I probably still agree with much of what the party stands for, I left the Libertarians for the same reason I… Read more »
Thoughts on Our Corrupted Presidential Election Process
Article V Blog – April 10th 2016. Did the Framers actually bequeath the circa 2016 Animal House presidential election process? Nothing occupied the Federal Convention of 1787 more than debate… Read more »
Not Progressive, But a Retrograde Government
Article V Blog – April 5th 2016. As we get worked up over the November elections, it is worthwhile to step back a moment from politics and take a look… Read more »
Rationalized Plunder – Scotus and the General Welfare
Article V Blog – April 2nd 2016. A little known scotus decision from 1937 set the stage for our accelerating slide into national bankruptcy. In Helvering v. Davis, an intimidated… Read more »
Natural Law – Not Just a Catholic Thing
I’m reading a book about the Natural Law philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas. In 50 Questions on the Natural Law, Charles E. Rice (Ignatius Press 1999) of Notre Dame Law… Read more »
Dictators and Republics, Part III
By 1945, after a dozen years of the New Deal and WWII, the US more or less accepted arbitrary government intrusion into domestic affairs. Leftist outrages from the 1960s to… Read more »