Jurgen Habermas, John C. Calhoun, and Slavery
The careful reader does not have to be a devotee of Jürgen Habermas or Michel Foucault to appreciate that discourse can often be about power, and efforts…
Mel Bradford and the Founding
Mel Bradford’s interest in the Founding follows naturally from his Agrarianism. He believed that, unlike the French and Russian Revolutions, America’s was a conservative revolution. Both the…
The Supreme Court Decides on Great Moral Questions
A dispute has broken out in the United States over the Supreme Court. US President Trump wants to immediately occupy the seat of the late Ruth Bader…
Is the Civil War Long Gone and Far Away?
Sitting at my desk in Louisiana the other week, where it was already as hot as it gets in Boston on the summer’s hottest day, my title,…
Franklin Pierce, Political Protest, and the Dilemmas of Democracy
On the stump in New Boston, New Hampshire in early January 1852, Franklin Pierce gave a long oration during which free-soil hecklers forced him to address his…
The Spontaneous Disorder of Kansas-Nebraska
The Kansas-Nebraska Act passed 165 years ago this past spring, and as cannons roared on Capitol Hill to celebrate its passing, over the next four years cannons…
Alexander Stephens and The “Cornerstone Speech”
Anxious onlookers packed the Savannah Athenaeum on the night of March 21, 1861 to hear the newly appointed Confederate States Vice President, Alexander Stephens. He had held…
Orestes Brownson’s New England and the Unwritten Constitution
The danger of majoritarian tyranny hangs over republics. The dilemma of constituting a virtuous republic while also restricting interests, sects, and factions’ use of unchecked political power…
The Rhetorical War Presidency of Barack Obama
Scholars of presidential rhetoric try to understand how presidents lead through speech. The classical studies of the rhetorical presidency examine how presidents "go public," how they use…
Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern American Liberalism
Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern American Liberalism. Ronald J. Pestritto. New York City: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005. Last year I held an exchange in…
Conservatism and Our Constitutional Inheritance
The essential question confronting American conservatism is what, precisely, it aspires to conserve. The ascension of Donald J. Trump not just to the Oval Office but also…
The Geopolitics of American Reaction
The election of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States in 2016 was the culmination of a long history of geopolitical factionalism and resentment that…
Claudia Brühwiler at the Virtual Party Conference of the US Democrats
The audio recording is available here. Der Wahlkampf in den USA geht in die heisse Phase. Diese Woche halten die US-Demokraten ihren Nominierungs-Parteitag ab. Aufgrund der Corona-Pandemie…
Decentralism and Meritorious Government: Reflections on Jeff Taylor’s Politics on a Human Scale
In the autumn of 2013, an American political theorist at Dordt College, Jeff Taylor, published a remarkable book entitled, Politics on a Human Scale: The American Tradition…
Decentralism and Subsidiarity: Applications to Society and Culture
There can be no such thing as a “global village.” No matter how much one may love the world as a whole, one can live fully in…
