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Michael Lucchese

Michael Lucchese is the founder of Pipe Creek Consulting, an associate editor of Law & Liberty, and a contributing editor to Providence.

Independence Hall

A Plea for Strict Construction 

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The true beauty of the American Founding is that it is rooted on the hope that “societies of men are really capable … of establishing good government from reflection and choice.” Throughout this book, it is evident that our author wonders at how the almost providential wisdom of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 achieved that—and such wonder is the very basis of political philosophy. It is only by recovering such a sensibility that Americans may make our Constitution efficacious once again. 
poetry

Poetry and the Politics of Aspirational Conservatism 

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More than the squabbles of party politics, conservatives ought to be concerned with defending our civilization’s way of life and the ordered liberty that sustains it.
Church

Christian Institutions in a New World

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Smith's book is an excellent reminder that conservatives should never prioritize an idealized individual or nation. Rather, we must work to preserve those institutions that point us to better lives.
Agrarian life

Rooted in the Nation: Whittaker Chambers’s Agrarian Conservatism

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Conservative political action can, in fact, be a bulwark of counterrevolution. This is why Whittaker Chambers was a “conservative of the heart,” even if he did not consider himself a “conservative of the head.” In the final analysis, he was a witness to the permanent things.
Robert A. Nisbet

Robert Nisbet and the Non-Libertarian Case for Decentralization

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Conservatives are defenders of traditional communities, not atomized individuals fending for themselves. We do not oppose the growth of the federal government merely because it is dangerous to individual liberty, but because the bureaucratization of American society violates our conception of the human good.
happy parents sitting on sofa and looking at little kids playing with domino tiles at home, 1950s style

Conservatives Can Do Better Than ’50s Nostalgia

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The 1950s have two main nostalgic pulls on conservatives: aesthetic and technocratic. Both rely on a constructed past that has little to do with the realities of American history—and therefore neither type of ’50s nostalgia offers serious solutions to the country’s problems. In fact, early conservatives like William F. Buckley, Robert Nisbet, and Russell Kirk saw the postwar liberal settlement of the ’50s as a betrayal, not an embodiment, of the best of the American political tradition.