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Sins of Admissions
by Richard Samuelson|2 Comments
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Richard Samuelson is associate professor of history at California State University, San Bernardino.
Sins of Admissions
(image: Tero Vesalainen / shutterstock.com)A National Thanksgiving: President Washington and America’s National Holiday
Editor’s note: This originally appeared on Thanksgiving Day, 2014.
Thanksgiving is a peculiar holiday, at least in the modern world. Its roots are religious, and the American nation is, at least in law, secular. Its very name speaks of thanks, or gratitude, and gratitude is an ancient virtue. Indeed Aristotle speaks highly of it. Even so, or perhaps for that reason, it is very American. In his Thanksgiving address in 1922, President Coolidge called it “perhaps the most characteristic of our national observances.” He was not wrong for, as Chesterton wrote, America is “a nation with the soul of a church,” and Abraham Lincoln called us an “almost chosen people.”
Jurisdiction, Old Style and New
Image: Leena Robinson/Shutterstock.comDon’t Settle for Roe
Image: Coffeemill/Shutterstock.comMadison’s Originalism
James Madison by Gilbert Stewart, 1821 (shutterstock.com)The War on Satire, Brought to You by Social Justice Warriors
Kunal Mehta/Shutterstock.comPresident Washington: A Prudent Guardian of State Secrets
Extend the Sphere of Identity Politics
Our identity politics could use some Madisonian wisdom.
Today’s Missouri Compromise Is Bad News
Are our laws producing “identity politics” and the divisions it fosters?
A scientist, or perhaps it was an engineer, once asked the political philosopher Harry Jaffa for a general scientific rule about politics. After reflecting upon the bizarre request, Jaffa came up with the following:
S = 2P, where “S” = solution and “P” = problem. Politics is tragic; there are no final solutions.
Critiquing the Administrative State Is Natural
In response to: What Is the Future of Conservatism?
Samuel Goldman has made a stimulating contribution to our political discussions. “What is the Future of Conservatism?” is thoughtful and thought-provoking. In light of the feud between Never Trump conservatives and Trump-supporting conservatives, it is well worth pondering if Goldman is right that we are witnessing a conservative “crack up.” This concern is not new. He might take a somewhat different line than did R. Emmett Tyrrell, founder of the American Spectator, but his language echoes Tyrrell’s The Conservative Crack-Up (1992). Despair is not new, either. Remember Russell Kirk’s original title for his 1953 classic The Conservative Mind was “The Conservative…
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Professor Goldman begins his Liberty Forum essay by urging a striking, but probably unworkable, reconception of the fundamental divide in conservative ranks. Rather than “the familiar distinctions between libertarianism and traditionalism, neoconservatism and paleoconservatism,” he proposes, it’s a conflict between “liberalism and reaction.” Reaction—meaning reactionary politics such as Trumpism—is, according to Goldman, not easily compatible with…
Samuel Goldman has written a bracing Liberty Forum essay suggesting that the Right side of the political spectrum is split, perhaps hopelessly and irrevocably, between classical liberalism and reaction. The roots of the divide are deep and enduring but what brings the problem into bold relief is our political moment and, above all, the rise…
Samuel Goldman has written a wide-ranging and thought-provoking Liberty Forum essay on the current sorry state of American conservatism. This sorry state is especially sorry for those of us who, like Dr. Goldman, believe that classical liberalism is the best part of American conservatism. It is an assessment, he says in conclusion, which he hopes…
I am grateful to David B. Frisk, John O. McGinnis, Matthew Mitchell, and Richard Samuelson for their generous and thoughtful replies to my Liberty Forum essay. Speaking broadly, we agree that the American Right is in a bad way. We also think it would be a mistake to abandon classical liberal commitments to constitutional government,…
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