Archives for May 2018

May 15, 2018|Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Edmund Burke, Irving Berlin, Patriotism, Wilfred McClay

“God Bless America” and Other Songs I Learned from Immigrants: A Conversation with Wilfred McClay

Wilfred McClay discusses our mixed patriotism.

May 15, 2018|A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States, Federalists, Friends Divided, Gordon Wood, Jeffersonian Republican Party, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson

The Relevance and Irrelevance of Gordon S. Wood

by C. Bradley Thompson|

Because historicism drives Wood’s evaluation of Adams and Jefferson, categories such as true or false, just or unjust, hardly come into play.

May 15, 2018|Blasphemy, Diversity, Eric Posner, Free Speech, Larry Summers, Progressivism

Why Progressives Want to Revive Norms Against Blasphemy

by John O. McGinnis|

Image from protest in Manhattan, April 14, 2015 (A Katz/Shutterstock.com).

Progressives have redefined the sacred and are reviving the concept of blasphemy without realizing it.

May 15, 2018|Alexander Hamilton, attitudinal model, Supreme Court

How Much Judicial Politicization is There?

by James R. Rogers|

RobertoM/Adobe Stock Images

Carefully assessing judicial politicization gives us fresh reasons to doubt the attitudinal model.

May 14, 2018|Congress, Filibuster, Senate

An Impotent Congress

by James Wallner|

Capitol Hill, Washington DC

Instead of a deliberative process in which Senate members put forward competing ideas, party leaders stage-manage a rigged debate.

May 11, 2018|Armando Ianucci, Central Committee of the Communist Party, Josef Stalin, Lavrenti Beria, Nikita Khrushchev, Soviet Union, The Death of Stalin, Totalitarianism

A Grimly Effective Death of Stalin

by Kenneth D.M. Jensen|

Steve Buscemi, Sylvestra Le Touzel, and Gerald Lepkowski in The Death of Stalin

There’s a lesson here for those who imagine one-party states, ideologues, and power-hungry tyrants are not really so different from you and me.

May 11, 2018|Alexander Hamilton, attitudinal model, Federalist Papers, Neil Gorsuch, Originalism, Supreme Court

Political Versus Principled Judging

by James R. Rogers|

Linda MacPherson/Shutterstock.com

Attitudes may matter more than originalists would like to admit, but we shouldn't discount the possibility of principled judging.

May 10, 2018|Construction, Interpretation, Jesse Merriam, Legal Turn, Libertarianism, Michael McConnell, Nathan Chapman, Ryan Williams

The Legal Turn is not a Libertarian Turn

by John O. McGinnis, Mike Rappaport|

Preamble to the Constitution (Jack R. Perry Photography/Shutterstock.com)

Michael Rappaport and John McGinnis respond to Jessie Merriam: the legal turn does not imply a libertarian bias.

May 10, 2018|American Founding, Declaration of Independence, Donald Trump, Economic growth, Enlightenment, John Locke, Liberalism, Rousseau, Suicide of the West

Jonah Goldberg’s Soulless Case for Liberty

by Richard M. Reinsch II|

PlusOne/Shutterstock.com

Jonah Goldberg’s Suicide of the West introduces us to a (mostly) soulless rhetoric of liberty.

May 10, 2018|Edmund Burke, integralism, Natural Law, Ordered Liberty

Why “Liberalism” Needs Natural Law

by Samuel Gregg|

Sarioz/Shutterstock.com

The liberal order depends upon natural law, and integralist critics of liberalism make a mistake in viewing natural reason as a political liability.

A Mirror of the 20th-Century Congress

by Joseph Postell

Wright undermined the very basis of his local popularity—the decentralized nature of the House—by supporting reforms that gave power to the party leaders.

The Graces of Flannery O'Connor

by Henry T. Edmondson III

O'Connor's correspondence is a goldmine of piercing insight and startling reflections on everything from literature to philosophy to raising peacocks.

Archives for May 2018

About