Ken Masugi Subscribe

Ken Masugi is a Senior Fellow of the Claremont Institute. He teaches in graduate programs in political science for Johns Hopkins University and for the Ashbrook Center of Ashland University. He has edited Interpreting Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, co-edited The Progressive Revolution in Politics and Political Science, and co-authored and co-edited several other books on American politics and political thought. In addition, he has worked ten years in the federal government as a speechwriter and on policy issues, at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, where he was a special assistant to Chairman Clarence Thomas, and the Departments of Justice and Labor.

April 14, 2016|Administrative State, apportionment, Evenwel v. Abbott, Jeffrey Toobin, Justice Clarence Thomas, Justice John Marshall Harlan, Originalism, Republican Government Guarantee Clause

Justice Thomas: Mr. Republican

by Ken Masugi|

(Photo by David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images)

Once again Justice Clarence Thomas has given originalist jurisprudence its most robust defense through his revival of an obscure part of the U.S. Constitution.

In 2010, in McDonald v. Chicago, he had protected the right to individual gun ownership by invoking the Fourteenth Amendment’s Privileges or Immunities Clause. Now he has concurred in the decision in Evenwel v. Abbott (2016), which unanimously affirms the state of Texas’ use of population (rather than being required to use eligible voters) as the basis for devising electoral districts.

March 14, 2016|Abraham Lincoln, border state of Kentucky, Corwin Amendment, James Mitchell Ashley, judicial oligarchy, Leonard L. Richards, Thirteenth Amendment, Who Freed the Slaves?

Lucky 13

by Ken Masugi|

The short answer to the question posed in this book’s title is the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, whose early and chief congressional proponent was Ohio Republican James Mitchell Ashley (1824-1896), a Representative from the district around Toledo. This readable book, published on the sesquicentennial of the amendment’s adoption, spurs us to know more about this remarkable American as well as the other liberators—the antislavery politicians and other public figures, and members of the Union Army, from freedmen soldiers in the ranks to generals. It also depicts their opponents, especially the Democratic Party factions and Kentuckians, and their concerns, both…

December 7, 2015|George Washington, Islam, Obama, Religious Freedom, San Bernardino terrorist attack

Obama’s Less Orwellian Terrorism Speech

by Ken Masugi|

On the day before the Pearl Harbor anniversary (which he did not reference), President Obama admitted that “Our nation has been at war with terrorists since Al Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 Americans on 9/11,” including horrors that his Administration previously dismissed as workplace violence. While much of what he said seemed to deny the reality of war, the last fourth of the speech raises the key question of what Muslims owe the rest of the world in this time of war.

August 28, 2015|Peter Schramm

The Pleasure of His Friendship and Statesmanship: Remembering Peter Schramm

by Ken Masugi|

The phrase that our friend and mentor, the late Peter Schramm, is famous for is “Born American, but in the Wrong Place.” That’s the pithy wisdom his father offered a 10-year-old Peter to explain why they were leaving their native Hungary in 1956 for the United States, their true homeland.

August 17, 2015|Barack Obama, Donald Trump, General William Henry Harrison, General Zachary Taylor, Herbert Hoover, Lincoln's Temperance Address

Obama and Trump: Playing to Party Strengths

by Ken Masugi|

Barack Obama and Donald Trump have been justly attacked for their recent inflammatory rhetoric. But these criticisms miss the mark unless they are seen in the context of how, in their ways, the Democratic President and leading Republican contender reflect the presidential politics of their respective parties.

July 4, 2015|Declaration of Independence, John Calhoun, Justice Clarence Thomas, Obergefell v. Hodges

Confederate Flag-Waving at the Supreme Court

by Ken Masugi|

“I understand you are preparing to celebrate the ‘Fourth,’ tomorrow week. What for?” —Abraham Lincoln‘s words to the people of Springfield in 1857, reacting to the newly announced Dred Scott decision

The ferocity of the dissents in the final days of the Supreme Court’s term obscured the most profound of the dissents, that of Justice Clarence Thomas in the same-sex marriage case, Obergefell v. Hodges. In fact the Thomas opinion gives the most radical recent account of how American government has deteriorated.

March 19, 2015|Administrative State, Barack Obama, Ferguson Report, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Moynihan Report, Selma, Voting Rights Act

Civil Rights at the End of History: Hands Down, All Moot!

by Ken Masugi|

The celebrations of the Selma voting rights march 50 years ago noted how unthinkable it was that a Black President would be addressing them. Actually, it may have been no less unthinkable that a White Southern President seized the moment, a half century ago, to deliver the most stirring civil rights speech ever delivered to Congress.

February 2, 2015|Attorney General, Declaration of Independence, legal positivism, Loretta Lynch, Progressivism, Senate

The Patriots Didn’t Stop Lynch

by Ken Masugi|

For reasons known only to their coaches, the Seahawks decided against going “beast-mode” at the end of last night’s Super Bowl. Instead of running the unstoppable Marshawn Lynch, they flubbed a quick in-route and lost the game in the last seconds. So the Patriots weren’t faced with the challenge of stopping Lynch when it mattered. And that raises to mind a missed opportunity for another Lynch, Loretta Lynch, Obama’s nominee to be Attorney General and chief law enforcement officer of the land. This Lynch, however, has been given the ball. In what some thought might be a Judiciary Committee Superbowl on her nomination, instead turned out to be a fizzle for the constitutionalists. Lynch proved she can shed tackles also (although they were arm-tackles), while making the Republicans sound more like the press-defiant, laconic Marshawn Lynch.

January 21, 2015|Antifederalists, Democratic Party, Franklin Roosevelt, Obama, State of the Union Address

The Triumph of His Will

by Ken Masugi|

President Obama’s State of the Union Address makes blogging colleague Greg Weiner’s suggestion to abolish it look pretty good. Of the constitutional clause requiring that he address Congress, Greg observes: “If anything, modern Presidents ought to view its opening phrase—‘from time to time’—as a limit rather than a license.” I am even more \ drawn to Frank Buckley’s devastating critique of contemporary presidential government, The Once and Future King: The Rise of Crown Government in America.

I would have thought that Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) of all pols would not have conceded victory to Obama when he attacked Obama’s “class warfare” proposals—which is exactly the way Obama wants them viewed. Or that the congressman characterized the speech as not as extreme as he feared it would be.

January 15, 2015|Abraham Lincoln, American Conservatism, Aristotle, Barry Goldwater, Crisis of the House Divided, Declaration of Independence, Equality, Harry Jaffa, Leo Strauss, Martin Diamond

Harry V. Jaffa: An Inconvenient Thinker

by Ken Masugi|

Harry V. Jaffa, who died January 10, at 96, may well be American conservatism’s most consequential thinker, for having attempted to re-found conservatism on the basis of its most philosophic principles and most revered figures. He was also one of the most dismissed, berated, and scorned of scholars, earning derision from former friends and those who knew him only from his writing, much of which had become acerbic.

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.

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