Founding Fathers

Friday

Laura Powell

The Senator from Virginia vs. the Declaration of Independence

At a Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday, Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia – Hillary Clinton’s 2016 running mate – decided to pick a fight not with the nominee before him so much with the American founding itself. In a remarkable four-minute speech, clips of which went viral, Kaine challenged the very idea of natural rights – that is, the belief that human beings possess fundamental freedoms simply by virtue of being human, not because government chooses to grant them. His lecture was provoked by a seemingly uncontroversial statement.

Tim Kaine

Thursday

Ella Johnson

Why is James Madison so consistently forgotten?

James Madison is consistently forgotten. Admittedly, many of the Founding Fathers are forgotten. The average American could probably name two of the forty or so founders in Howard Chandler Christy’s Capitol painting “Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States.” But while Washington and Jefferson get imposing monuments in DC and Hamilton gets a musical, the father of our beloved Constitution hardly has a memorial. Asking Google why will pull up an article from the Harvard Law Bulletin quoting Professor Noah Feldman. “Unlike George Washington or Thomas Jefferson, no monument was built to honor Madison in the nation’s capital. You have to see the Constitution as his monument,” said Feldman. “His influence is hidden in plain sight.

Madison

Monday

Alexander Larman

Michael Douglas dazzles in Franklin

In one of his always entertaining books about Hollywood, screenwriter William Goldman offered a candid insight into why one picture he wrote, 1996’s The Ghost and The Darkness, didn’t work. He blamed its failure on the casting of Michael Douglas in a prominent role as a nineteenth-century big game hunter, describing Douglas the epitome of the “flawed, contemporary American male.” Certainly, compared to his peers, Douglas has taken on remarkably few costume drama roles. Instead, he became best known for icy performances in psychosexual thrillers like Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct, in which he played alpha males slowly dismantled by powerful and intellectually superior women, to say nothing of his iconic and deservedly Oscar-winning performance as Gordon “Greed is good!

franklin

Tuesday

Samuel Gregg

Free markets are part of the American tradition

Election aftermaths are always an opportunity for taking stock. Since the 2022 midterms, we’ve heard prominent Republicans stressing the need to revisit questions ranging from electoral strategy to how to engage the culture wars. What desperately needs discussion on the American right, however, is conservatism’s approach to economic policy. Since 2015, American conservatives have been deeply divided over economics. Conservative skepticism about markets predates Donald Trump, but there’s little question that Trump shattered the favorable views of free markets that had prevailed since Ronald Reagan’s presidency.

Monday

Grayson Quay

If Hamilton is cringe, then America is done for

I’ve been reliably informed that Hamilton is now cringe. Constance Grady of Vox explains, drawing on a scene from the recent reboot of Gossip Girl: “You know, I saw Hamilton… before it went on Broadway,” brags one of the teens, hoping to impress his cool new girlfriend Zoya. “You into that play?” Zoya, the wokest of the group and the one with the most sophisticated literary taste, sighs deeply and rolls her eyes. “No doubt it’s a work of art,” she allows. “But …” Zoya doesn’t finish her sentence.

Monday

Casey Chalk

Cicero on rejecting the 1619 Project

“Why are the Wisest ever the most easy and content to die, and the Weak and Foolish the utmost unwilling? Is it not, think you, because the most Knowing perceive, they are going to change for a happier State, of which the more Stupid and Ignorant are uncapable of being sensible?” Thus wrote Cicero in On a Life Well Spent, a 2,000-year-old essay. The English version I possess was published by Benjamin Franklin in 1744, and it was beloved by the Founders, one of the most remarkable generations to have graced the North American continent. Well, so people used to think.

Wednesday

Charles Lipson

The Founding Fathers’ focus group on impeachment, 1787

We recently learned that House Democrats are concentrating their impeachment drive on ‘bribery’ because focus groups liked it better than other terms Democrats have floated. The term never appeared in previous testimony; no one accused President Trump of bribery or even mentioned it. That omission is only a minor obstacle, apparently.Focus-group testing is widely recognized as the best way to deal with grave constitutional matters, as well as marketing breakfast cereals and e-cigarettes. It is not surprising, then, that legal scholars are scouring focus groups throughout American history to see what light they shed on the Trump impeachment.The most important of these earlier focus groups was that of the Founding Fathers, secretly convened in Philadelphia in 1787.

founding fathers