Facebook Twitter Instagram Youtube Rss
Search Results For:

Search Results for: founders

Statue of liberty

The Founders’ Gift and Its New American Enemies 

By
Religious freedom for everyone, everywhere? 

Why the Founders Chose the Electoral College Design

By and
The Founders feared tyrannies, especially majority tyrannies. We remain free not because of the Bill of Rights, but because of the dynamic checks and balances in our national and state constitutions. 

The Founders’ Natural Rights Philosophy Does Not Entail Radical Autonomy

By
It’s an error for conservatives to see the American Founding’s emphasis on natural rights as necessarily fostering extreme individualism in contemporary America. Eighteenth-century Americans would have viewed the notion that rights could be exercised contrary to natural law as ridiculous.

Vindicating the Founders . . . Again

By
The political theory of the American founding is not quite the “cure for what ails us,” but, as Thomas G. West’s books demonstrate, it can serve as a kind of preventive medicine against the psychological sickness of radical individualism.

Don’t Blame the Founders for Our Civic Disintegration

By
Leslie Rubin’s brilliant study argues that the fault, dear America, lies not in our stars but in ourselves—our repudiation in the past century of the moderate liberal philosophy of Federalists and Anti-Federalists alike, which was steeped in Aristotelian wisdom about favoring the decent republican virtues of a middle class.

Locke and the Founders Agree: The President Can Pardon Himself

By
The pardon power is the most significant and strongest power of the president, and the Constitution places almost no limits on it. In using it, the president can unilaterally nullify the legitimate authority of the legislative and judicial branches.

The Founders on Lifelong Marriage and the Limits of Reason: Reply to Muñoz

By
If there is one truth that the entire philosophic tradition—including America’s Founders—may be said to embrace, in spite of all its disagreements, it is this: reason teaches that it is unreasonable to expect people to act by reason alone.

The Urgency of Restoring the Biblical Values of America’s Founders

By
Our nation was founded on biblical principles as a haven for devoutly religious dissidents. We forget our Judeo-Christian origins and the founders’ commitment to freedom of religion at our peril.

Making Sense of the Founders: Politics, Natural Rights, and the Laws of Nature

By
It is often alleged that the American founders lacked a unified and coherent political theory. To the contrary, a recent book by Thomas West shows that the founders broadly agreed on a philosophy of natural rights, calling for both the protection of liberty and the promotion of virtue.
Public Discourse

We Must Preserve the Founders’ Classical Vision for Our Nation’s Capital

By
The plan of our nation’s capital and the architecture of its core buildings and monuments must carry on the classical vision the Founders intended as the physical manifestation of America’s form of government and political ideals.
Public Discourse

Constitutional Disorder in the Era of Judicial Supremacy: The Founders’ Understanding of the Court

By
Judicial supremacy is inimical to the separation of powers, to republicanism, and even to constitutionalism and the rule of law. The upcoming confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor should force citizens to reconsider the place of the Court in our political life. The first in a two-part series.
American constitutionalism

The Forgotten Foundations of Constitutional Law 

By
Long before the separation of powers and judicial review were given written form, Greek philosophy, Roman law, Christian theology, and the medieval doctrine of paired jurisdictions laid the deeper architecture of constitutional government.  
Jefferson

Hamilton, Jefferson, and the Fight for Power in America 

By
Taken as a whole, Rosen’s book offers a learned and sober account of the relevance of Hamilton’s and Jefferson’s principles to America’s past, present, and possible future. 
John Adams

John Adams and the Structures of Liberty 

By
As we approach the semiquincentennial, it is important to reflect on the spirit of 1776 and the principles of the Revolution that have shaped the American ethos. But it is also a time to reflect on how our various governmental structures uphold and preserve liberty. 
Church of the Assumption St. Paul MN

The Bookshelf: Why Catholics Should Celebrate America’s 250th Birthday  

By
From the Gospel, to Acts, to the Church Fathers, to the doctrine of the two swords and the freedom of the Church, to the recognition in modern times of the freedom of conscience as an unalienable right at the foundation of a free society: the very ideas of human equality, freedom, and limited government would never have borne the fruit we see in American society without the Christian—and Catholic—intellectual tradition supplying the argument.
MAGA rally

What’s Behind the Making of the MAGA New Right? 

By
Field’s account is eye-opening. At the same time, as a professed “liberal,” she exhibits elements of excessive partisanship that weaken her argument. 
Church vs. state

What is Freedom of Religion? 

By
We need philosophical arguments to counter the empty voluntarism of our time, and this is a challenge the Church should meet head-on.
Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island

The Dark History of American Nativism 

By
For all its failures and drawbacks—and there are many—American culture’s focus on individual freedom is intoxicating and infectious.
Supreme Court

Originalists Need the Classical Legal Tradition 

By
The conservative legal movement has come far, but we’re just getting started. 
Notre Dame campus

How Catholic Should a Catholic Institution Be? 

By
The University of Notre Dame does not and ought not have the luxury of relegating moral and theological questions to the margins.
Hebrew Bible

Uncovering the Jewish Roots of American Liberty  

By
The Hebrew Bible offers a “political realism” that may assist both religions, and hence Western civilization, to survive. 
school choice

School Choice Is About Religious Liberty, Not Just Better Test Scores 

By
America’s constitutional tradition recognizes parents as primary educators. To honor this, policymakers must safeguard private school autonomy and ensure funding follows students to their families’ chosen learning environment.
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals

The Ninth Circuit’s Religious Freedom Coup 

By
For years, perhaps the most serious threat to religious organizations’ freedom to live according to their faith has been the ever-growing specter of nondiscrimination laws. The Ninth Circuit’s decision here offers perhaps the strongest opportunity we have seen yet to affirm the constitutional right of religious organizations to hire according to their faith. 
Declaration of Independence

Without Virtue, Freedom Fails 

By
We cannot expect to preserve a liberal democracy until each generation learns to embrace its civic responsibilities.