Defending the Founders
November 27, 2011 — Scott Johnson
Equality is the great theme of American politics, but is equality rightly understood as equality of rights or results? Equality of rights is deeply rooted in the foundational documents of the United States. It is, you might say, the American way. Equality of results is the great error that continues to exert its powerful attractions. In the Federalist Papers, Publius recognizes “the diversity in the faculties of men, from which
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November 19, 2011 — Scott Johnson
The Federalist Society — are you now or have you ever been a member? — held its 2011 National Lawyers Convention last week. One of the (many) highlights of the convention must have been the debate on the constitutionalilty of Obamacare between Harvard’s Carl M. Loeb University Professor Laurence Tribe and former United States Solicitor General Paul D. Clement of Bancroft PLLC. This is an excellent debate, must watching straight
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November 15, 2011 — Steven Hayward
Between now and whenever the Supreme Court issues its decision on Obamacare (I predict the last day of the term in late June next year), there will be endless reading of the tea leaves, textual analyses of the briefs, the dynamic of the oral argument, and so forth. (Will the Court limit the number of amicus briefs it will take on this case? America’s forests ought to be very worried
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November 14, 2011 — Steven Hayward
The news out today that the Supreme Court will hear the Obamacare case this term is not a big surprise (they might have punted on “ripeness” grounds, as more than one lower court judge argued), but Ilya Shapiro of the Cato Institute points out why this is no ordinary case–it’s beyond even an extraordinarycase: What was unexpected — and unprecedented in modern times — is that it set aside five-and-a-half
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November 12, 2011 — Steven Hayward
The first batch of letters—31 in all—from the Letters from an Ohio Farmer project that I’ve noted here a few times is now out in book form under the title A Constitutional Conversation. It’s available right away on Kindle, but also coming soon in traditional hard copy. These short essays are written in the spirit of the Federalist, intended to focus more seriously on the constitutional dimensions of our current
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November 10, 2011 — Steven Hayward
My note about Newt yesterday excited a fair amount of comment, and watching the GOP debate last night on CNBC it seems to me that everything I said was vindicated: Newt has hit his stride, and was consistently the most impressive and forceful person on the stage—and forceful without saying a negative word about any of the other candidates. (Oh yeah, and Perry flubbed his lines badly. Again.) My favorite
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November 7, 2011 — Scott Johnson
Power Line reader RPW created a Halloween parable via the Xtranormal video platform and posted it on October 29, though it is titled “Just after Halloween, 2011.” In the lit biz, I believe they call that prolepsis. In any event, the video will remain timely for the indefinite future. The video comments in its own style on the Obama/OWS phenomenon. In a mere four minutes it makes a profound point
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October 19, 2011 — Scott Johnson
Larry Arnn is the twelfth president of Hillsdale College, the former president of the Claremont Institute, and the vice chairman of the Claremont Institute’s Board of Directors. As the president of the Claremont Institute, Arnn was instrumental in the founding of the original Claremont Review of Books, the Claremont Institute’s flagship publication and one of the flagship publications of the conservative movement. Among his contributions to the CRB is the
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August 20, 2011 — Scott Johnson
We posted Professor Joyce Malcolm’s commentary on the British riots in “Malcolm’s moment” earlier this week. A commenter going under the handle of the scotsman has posted a vehement critique of Professor Malcolm’s commentary at Free Republic. Professor Malcolm responds: The information I have written, while obviously exciting the scotsman to the point of hysteria, happens to be accurate. To take just a couple of points: When the British police
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August 18, 2011 — Scott Johnson
As I read Paul Rahe’s recent Ricochet post “Rioting for fun and profit,” it occurred to me that events in England had made this Malcolm’s moment — Malcolm as in Professor Joyce Lee Malcolm. Professor Malcolm is a historian and constitutional scholar specializing in British and colonial American history who teaches on the faculty of the George Mason University Law School. Professor Malcolm has devoted much of her scholarly career
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July 22, 2011 — Scott Johnson
The Republican Party was founded in the belief that it was “the imperative duty of Congress to prohibit in the Territories those twin relics of barbarism — Polygamy, and Slavery,” as the party platform of 1856 put it. The slavery issue took a civil war to iron out, but Utah would not in fact be welcome in the Union until Mormons ditched their devotion to plural marriage. Polygamy is therefore
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July 4, 2011 — John Hinderaker
Normally we wouldn’t bother to critique an op-ed in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, but this one by political reporter Dane Smith, which implicitly addresses the current budget standoffs in both Washington and Minnesota, is perhaps worth a brief review. Smith’s theme is that today’s conservatives, especially those associated with the Tea Party, are like the anti-federalists who opposed the creation of the United States. Federalist heroes, notably George Washington and
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July 4, 2011 — Scott Johnson
On July 9, 1858, Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas gave a campaign speech to a raucous throng from the balcony of the Tremont Hotel in Chicago. Abraham Lincoln was in the audience when Douglas prepared to speak. Douglas invited Lincoln to come join him on the balcony to watch the speech. In his speech Douglas rang the themes of the momentous campaign that Lincoln and Douglas waged that summer and fall
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July 2, 2011 — Steven Hayward
Michele Bachmann is getting heat for this exchange with ABC’s George Stepalloverus about her claim that the Founders “worked tirelessly” to end slavery, and then got tangled up with him about whether John Quincy Adams should be considered among the Founders, though he was only a boy when his father was doing his Founding deeds. The distraction about JQ Adams was unfortunate, for it allowed Stephanopoulos to get away with
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July 28, 2010 — Scott Johnson
Reading the scholarly work of Woodrow Wilson is an educational experience. It is shocking to read the expressions of his disaffection for the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. As R.J. Pestritto has demonstrated, the intellectual roots of modern liberalism lie in an assault on the ideas of natural rights and limited government. They eventuate in an administrative state and rule by supposed experts. Obamacare represents
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June 25, 2005 — Scott Johnson
In Vindicating the Founders, Claremont Institute Senior Fellow Thomas West sought to present a historically accurate picture of the founders’ views and policies on issues of race, sex, class and justice. He did so because he found the founders’ views to be superior in truth and fairness to the views of their historical predecessors and successors, foremost among them the Progressives. Professor West first addressed the founders’ view of property
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