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Richard Samuelson is associate professor of history at California State University, San Bernardino.

November 28, 2019|Alexander Hamilton, President, Proclamation for Thanksgiving, Thomas Jefferson

A National Thanksgiving: President Washington and America’s National Holiday

by Richard Samuelson|3 Comments

The authority to proclaim a Thanksgiving might seem trivial to us. But it is, in fact, fraught with meaning.

April 11, 2019|college-admissions scandal, Higher Education, John Adams, Liberal Arts, Thomas Jefferson

Sins of Admissions

by Richard Samuelson|2 Comments

(image: Tero Vesalainen / shutterstock.com)

The college-admissions scandal enrages conservatives, who detest the concentrated power that today’s “best schools” represent; but we always had an elite.

November 13, 2018|Birthright citizenship, Fourteenth Amendment, Jurisdiction, Michael Rappaport, Richard Epstein, U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark

Jurisdiction, Old Style and New

by Richard Samuelson|5 Comments

Image: Leena Robinson/Shutterstock.com

If we take the Fourteenth Amendment to mean what Michael Rappaport and others argue, some strange consequences follow for resident aliens.

September 14, 2018|Abortion, Brett Kavanaugh, Equality, George Washington, John Adams, Peter Singer, Roe v. Wade, Thomas Jefferson

Don’t Settle for Roe

by Richard Samuelson|25 Comments

Image: Coffeemill/Shutterstock.com

If Roe v. Wade is overturned, we will have to go back to the messy compromises of politics, which might actually avert a new disunion.

June 26, 2018|Amendment Process, James Madison, Lynn Uzzell, Madison's Hand, Originalism

Madison’s Originalism

by Richard Samuelson|12 Comments

James Madison by Gilbert Stewart, 1821 (shutterstock.com)

The rationale for what is now called “originalism” has chiefly to do with the legitimacy of the 1787 Constitution.

January 31, 2018|Executive Privilege, George Washington, Jay Treaty, State Secrets

President Washington: A Prudent Guardian of State Secrets

by Richard Samuelson|4 Comments

In 1796, in the midst of the donnybrook over the Jay Treaty, President Washington asserted what we now call “executive privilege .”

September 19, 2017|Federalist 10, Identity Politics, Immigration, James Madison, U.S. Census, Voltaire

Extend the Sphere of Identity Politics

by Richard Samuelson|31 Comments

Our identity politics could use some Madisonian wisdom.

August 29, 2017|EEOC, John Calhoun, Missouri Compromise, Plessy v. Ferguson, Taylor Swift, Thomas Jefferson

Today’s Missouri Compromise Is Bad News

by Richard Samuelson|16 Comments

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.

May 22, 2017|

Critiquing the Administrative State Is Natural

by Richard Samuelson|1 Comment

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…

Don’t Take the Benedict Option

by David B. Frisk

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…

Creative Tension, Not Crack-Up

by John O. McGinnis

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…

Freedom Might Well Flourish Even If Conservatives Don’t

by Matthew Mitchell

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…

Samuel Goldman Responds to His Critics

by Samuel Goldman

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,…

What the Anti-Poverty Activists Hath Wrought

by Daniel P. Schmidt

Many prominent helpers of the disadvantaged thought nothing of turning anti-poverty efforts over to the state; but there were (and are) noble exceptions.