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…
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…
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…
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…
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. Ronald J. Pestritto. New York City: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005. Last year I held an exchange in…
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 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…
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…
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…
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…
America's Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It. C. Bradley Thompson. New York: Encounter Books, 2019. C. Bradley…
It is often said that the American Revolution resonated across the pond and inspired the French to rebel and liberate their country in a similar, heroic fashion…
Good Intentions: A History of Catholic Voters’ Road from Roe to Trump. Steven P. Millies. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2018. There is a familiar English proverb, “The…
Religion in the Public Square: Sheen, King, Falwell. James M. Patterson. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019. Patrick Deneen’s provocative book, Why Liberalism Failed (Yale, 2018), argues…
Disney’s Lion King was initially, and continues to be in its latest iteration, a rewriting of Hamlet, one that rewrites Shakespeare’s dark tragedy into a myth of…