Conservative Conversation and Community
When I realized it was my turn for the November Group Writing Series and the theme was elimination, I started to fret a little. Elimination is a challenging word, turning it over and over in my mind. It became complicated – talk about the all consuming Mid-terms? The Caravan? Did the Founders stress out this […]
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For this week’s Big Ideas with Ben Weingarten podcast, my guest was Rich Higgins. Higgins, an expert in unconventional warfare and combatting terrorism with over 20 years experience at senior levels of the Defense Department, and early supporter of President Trump, served as director for strategic planning in President Trump’s National Security Council (NSC). More
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For this week’s Big Ideas with Ben Weingarten podcast, I had nationally syndicated radio host, columnist, author of numerous books, teacher, film producer and co-founder of PragerU, Dennis Prager, on the podcast to discuss among other things:
You can find the episode on iTunes, everywhere else podcasts are found, download the episode directly here or read the transcript here.
MoreIn honor of Independence Day, for this week’s Big Ideas with Ben Weingarten podcast I take a deep dive into the Declaration of Independence, discussing:
You can find the episode on iTunes, everywhere else podcasts are found or download the episode directly here.
MoreDuring the 2016 election, my conservative county and specifically, my neighborhood, sported a few Hillary signs, but more noticeably were the Bernie Sanders signs. One neighbor is a young couple with little children, self-employed, successful and Bernie was gracing their driveway. That gave me pause. At one point, he was almost neck and neck with […]
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More“No, posterity, you will never know how much it cost us to preserve your freedom. I hope that you will make a good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it.”
Lionized in print and on theater stages, Alexander Hamilton is a curious bookend for a new president who likewise calls Manhattan home, is steeped in capitalism, and uses the media to joust with his rivals. Elizabeth Cobbs, a Hoover Institution senior fellow and author of The Hamilton Affair: A Novel, separates fact from fiction regarding […]
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I recently participated in a symposium at Mosaic magazine about the future of Europe. You can read my advice to Europe here. As I put it, Europe’s now facing history’s biggest constitutional crisis.
With that in mind, I just watched OpenEurope’s simulation of the negotiations that will determine Britain’s place in Europe with particular interest.
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This should shake things up a little… More
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I’ve been reading the original debate over the Constitution in 1787, and came across this brilliant gem of a quote, from “Federal Farmer” – what Hamilton called the most plausible [series of] arguments against the new government: “It is natural for men, who wish to hasten the adoption of a measure, to tell us, now […]
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As you’ve likely heard — including on our own Member Feed — the Department of the Treasury is planning to replace the portrait of Alexander Hamilton on the $10 bill, very likely with Harriet Tubman’s. All due respect to Mrs. Tubman — who deserves it greatly — but this is an incredible travesty. For all his many faults, Hamilton is one of the most extraordinary members of one of the most extraordinary generations in world history — and a handsome devil at that.
It’s difficult to decide which is more amazing: that Hamilton accomplished so much during his 51 years of life, or that he managed to make it that long before getting himself killed. While many of the incidents of his life are extremely well known — his work as Washington’s aide and spymaster, his contributions to the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, his remarkable and controversial tenure at Treasury, his affair with Maria Reynolds, his battles with Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr — his life also has a lot of chapters that are more obscure. Here are four of them:
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If the Founding Fathers failed in any regard, they failed to make governance sufficiently horrible, thankless, difficult, rancorous, disagreeable, and ineffective. No doubt once they found themselves in it, they discovered just how awful it really was, but they failed to keep it that way.
Little by little, steps have been taken, salaries increased, perks added, trappings acknowledged, and holding office has morphed into the insular, protected, self-congratulatory, celebrity, investment club that it now is. To paraphrase Mel Brooks: it’s good to be the government.
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Americans — both Republicans and Democrats — often miss a key aspect of American conservatism: that it stems from classical liberalism, not European conservatism. Therefore, when we debate policies today, we should acknowledge that America’s classically liberal tradition is the basis of our founding and that America’s conservatives want to preserve that tradition.
American conservatism is a unique political philosophy. It is a strange synthesis of philosophies respecting God, human dignity, liberty, the rule of law, order, individual freedom and equality. It is, in short, a radically liberal philosophy.
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Try and get through this smug codswallop; it’s interesting. To wit (follow the link to compare the pictures): It’s like rain on your wedding day. It’s a free ride when you’ve already paid. It’s a strongly conservative news network blatantly copying the logo of video game in which the villain is a strongly conservative evil […]
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The left wants to freeze time.
The world population needs to be limited to an arbitrary number of some recent year. The air needs to be as clean as the most famous environmentalist’s memory renders. Trade needs to be at the level of the trendiest primitive society du jour. Food needs to be prepared the way someone remembers it.
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In the latest installment of The Libertarian podcast, Professor Epstein takes us through a thorough consideration of the issue of property rights: how the Founders thought about them, when the courts started distorting them, and what can be done to restore them to reasonable strength. Take a listen:
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