Defending the Founders
June 3, 2026 — Steven Hayward
I’m finally back from two weeks overseas mixing an academic conference with some vacationing, and just in time. Here I am hanging on every word from the great John Malcolm at Università degli Studi di Enna Kore in Sicily last week. We’re now only a month away from the July 4 semiquincentennial of the founding of our country, and there’s still time to acquire and read through some of the
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May 19, 2026 — Steven Hayward
Normally I’m not much of a Nicholas Cage fan, and I have mostly outgrown action-adventure movies, but I do very much like the short scene, excerpted in the cold open in the podcast file below, from “National Treasure,” set in the National Archives, where Cage gazes reverently at the Declaration of Independence and recites the “right of revolution” passage from the middle of the famous second paragraph, after which he
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May 12, 2026 — Steven Hayward
This special classic format podcast series leading up to July 4 will start to pick up steam in the next couple weeks. I resume here with John G. West of the Discovery Institute, who sat down with me recently in his Seattle office to discuss his new book, Endowed by Our Creator: The Bible, Science, and the Battle for America’s Soul. Margaret Thatcher once remarked that “Europe was created by
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April 24, 2026 — Scott Johnson
We attended the Federalist Society’s 2026 G. Barry Anderson Dinner and Award yesterday evening. Minnesota Court of Appeals Judge Matthew Johnson received the award for his scrupulous contributions to the court. Third Circuit Judge Thomas Hardiman was the keynote speaker. His subject was patriotism. It was a beautiful and moving speech. Some prominent publication like the Wall Street Journal should ask for a look at the text of Judge Hardiman’s
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July 4, 2025 — Scott Johnson
President Calvin Coolidge celebrated the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1926, with a speech providing a magisterial review of the history and thought underlying the Declaration. His speech on the occasion deserves to be read and studied in its entirety. The following paragraph, however, is particularly relevant to the challenge that confronts us in the variants of the progressive dogma that pass themselves off today
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July 4, 2025 — 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 as Douglas prepared to speak. Douglas graciously invited Lincoln to join him on the balcony to listen to the speech. In his speech Douglas sounded the themes of the momentous campaign that Lincoln and Douglas waged that summer and
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July 4, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley
July 4 is about celebrating independence but this year it’s more about regaining it. President Trump established energy independence for the first time in decades. On his first day in the White House, Joe Biden returned the nation to dependence on foreign nations not always reliable. Independent nations do not destroy their border, but that’s what Joe Biden did his first day in the White House. Since then, the Delaware
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July 4, 2024 — Scott Johnson
President Calvin Coolidge celebrated the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1926, with a speech providing a magisterial review of the history and thought underlying the Declaration. His speech on the occasion deserves to be read and studied in its entirety. The following paragraph, however, is particularly relevant to the challenge that confronts us in the variants of the progressive dogma that pass themselves off today
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July 4, 2024 — 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 as Douglas prepared to speak. Douglas graciously invited Lincoln to join him on the balcony to listen to the speech. In his speech Douglas sounded the themes of the momentous campaign that Lincoln and Douglas waged that summer and
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April 8, 2024 — Steven Hayward
The ideologically indescribable historian John Patrick Diggins once offered this version of the Declaration of Independence if it had been written by contemporary intellectuals: We hold these truths to be historically conditioned: that all men are created equal and mutually dependent; that from that equal creation they derive rights that are alienable and transferable depending on the larger question of needs, among which are the preservation of life, liberty, and
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February 22, 2024 — Scott Johnson
Today we celebrate the anniversary of the birth of George Washington. Of all the great men of the revolutionary era to whom we owe our freedom, Washington’s greatness was the rarest and the most needed. At this remove in time, it is also the hardest to comprehend. Take, for example, Washington’s contribution to the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Washington’s mere presence lent the undertaking and its handiwork the legitimacy that
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January 5, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Yesterday we held our second class session of Power Line University, this time taking up the famous Federalist #10, drawing out key points of James Madison’s views on how an “extended republic”—long thought impossible—was a solution for the perpetual defects and eventual failures of republican governments. His views on equality and property come in for special attention. If you want to see the text slides, you can take it in
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December 27, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Following up on our dry run at Power Line University last week (not too late to go back and take it in if you missed it), tomorrow (Wednesday) at 4 pm Pacific/7 pm Eastern, we’ll be doing our first class session on The Federalist in webinar format, which means you’ll be able to watch live and send in questions and comments. We’ll be covering Federalist numbers 1 – 10, with
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December 22, 2022 — Steven Hayward
I get a steady stream of emails from readers and listeners who want to know if any of my or Lucretia’s college courses are webcast or otherwise available online, and unfortunately the answer is No, partly for legal reasons but also for some technical reasons (streaming live classes is not as easy as it might seem, and the recording quality is often poor). But we have for the longest time
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March 22, 2022 — Steven Hayward
The confirmation hearings for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson are off to a predictable start, with Sen. Ted Cruz mentioning the forgotten late 18th-century Justice Bushrod Washington, who was confirmed to the Supreme Court in 24 hours, provoking a spasm from the left, which may have been Cruz’s intent. Gillian Brockwell, a staff writer for the Washington Post‘s “history blog,” found this all too much to take: Ted Cruz told Ketanji
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December 17, 2021 — Steven Hayward
One reason the left hates the American Constitution, and wishes to replace it, is that its embedded principles along with much of its explicit text is foursquare against the two main purposes of the left: class struggle and race struggle. Never mind the drive to abolish the electoral college, or the Senate, or admit new states to increase the odds of Democratic election victories. Just take in how the left
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September 4, 2021 — Steven Hayward
Next Tuesday, Encounter Books will publish Glenn Ellmers’ magisterial intellectual biography The Soul of Politics: Harry Jaffa and the Fight for America, and Glenn joins us this week to walk through some of the highlights in the book in what is turning out to be a month-long “Jaffapalooza.” Naturally, we draw Glenn into our running argument about the problems of communicating the proper understanding of the principle of equality in an
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