In the times that try men’s souls, sometimes the best thing we can do is stand athwart the zeitgeist and offer a principled dissent.
The Progress of Leviathan
Trumpism is simply the inevitable result of a century-long expansion of federal authority and the centralizing of power in the US Presidency.
Link: Does the Constitution Hang by a Thread?
The US Constitution hangs by far fewer threads than it did even a few years ago. But of those threads, I will say this: there may be few, but they have the capacity to be strong.
Perfect Bedrock – Part 4 (Ordered Liberty and Natural Law)
Balancing order and liberty is only possible through deliberative process of grounding our politics and personal lives to shared historical experiences, norms, and institutions.
Link: What Are Constitutional Values?
The US Constitution doesn’t exist in a vacuum. There are strong ideological and philosophical underpinnings behind its provisions and framework.
What About Limited Government?
In a contest between nationalists and progressives, the founding vision is no where to be found.
Perfect Bedrock – Part 3 (Legislating Morality)
The conservative recognizes God’s law as the foundation for all good things, but also understands humanity’s imperfect nature would corrupt any attempt to build heaven on earth as a government project.
The Marginal Drift of the Republican Party
While many members of the GOP still see themselves as conservative, the party’s tone and direction has severely drifted into the realm of populist nationalism as it has been willing to abandon core traditional tenets of conservative orthodoxy.
Link: Experience, The Oracle of Truth
Often, Americans speak of the US Constitution as if it is the fountain from which political truth originates. Even those who fight stridently for constitutional orthodoxy sometimes forget that the US Constitution and the rest of America’s founding documents were just as much a climax of political thought as they were a beginning.
Perfect Bedrock – Part 2 (Where Does Order Come From?)
Can the parameters of good order be deduced through reason alone? If not, to what source of authority can society turn to?