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Why Do We Have an Electoral College?
by Gary Gregg
The de facto abolition of the Electoral College might make presidential selection easier for some to comprehend. It would be reducible to the formula, “he got the most votes.” But our Founders believed that only a rather complex structure would serve the needs of order without threatening the goal of liberty. Such a simplification of the system would radicalize our politics, undermine the rule of law, lengthen the political process, render small states irrelevant, and enthrone urban areas as undisputed kingmakers. Most importantly, there is no guarantee, or even likelihood, that it would result in what should be the key goal of any electoral reform—selecting better people for office.
Opponents of the Electoral College came closest to prevailing in Congress during the 1970s. In that debate, New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan passionately recounted... [MORE]
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Yes, America First! Notes on the End and Beginning of an Age
by John Willson
Mr. Trump may not own America First in his heart, but he feels it. As time has gone along, he has learned to express it better. He may not be the ideal spokesman for the transition into the America First era, but only someone with his combination of money, independence (George Gilder remarked that the most important five words he has spoken are, “I’m rich. I’m really rich.”) thick skin, and utter fearlessness in the face of the ruling elite can shake things up enough to begin, as he puts it, “to drain the swamp.” What replaces a swamp? The Great Black Swamp of northwest Ohio became some of the most productive farmland in the world. It would be fitting if Ohio provides an electoral pump to allow America First eventually to grow in Washington, D.C. Despite Mr. Trump’s New York business roots, America First is essentially a heartland movement, a flyover country pushback against coastal globalism, a vast patriot coalition fed up with the one world ideologues of the Ruling Class.
Mr. Trump is what John Seiler calls the “eye of the rage” of a populist uprising, but its essence is not anger.... [MORE]
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Individualism: The Root Error of Modernity
by George Stanciu
The ancient and modern ways of understanding humans, nature, and the transcendent differ radically. In Modernity, the cosmos is “opaque, inert, mute” unlike the ancient outlook, as developed by Aristotle and Aquinas, where Homo sapiens, an integral part of nature, shares a life with plants, animals, and the Prime Mover (God), all of which form a hierarchy ordered by degrees of nonmateriality. While self is not ignored by these two ancient thinkers, they emphasize the soul, what is universal about each person. In Modernity, of course, the soul is replaced by the isolated, autonomous self.
We have arrived at the Great Chasm that separates modern and ancient cultures, a chasm that may be bridgeable intellectually, but not experientially. We moderns live in a totally different cosmos than our medieval ancestors or our Greek forbearers. Aristotle believed that.... [MORE]
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Jeffersonianism & the Roots of American Conservatism
by Ryan Walters
Radical Republicans hated the South and Southern institutions, particularly the Jeffersonian philosophy of government, which they hoped to destroy for good. They wanted the complete subjugation of the region, vindictive punishment of the rebels, the overthrow of all Southern state governments, and the confiscation of all land and homes. Peoples from the North and West would then be sent to the South to repopulate it, ensuring that it would remain firmly Republican and solidly Hamiltonian. In other words, they wanted to make the South like the North, sweeping away all vestiges of Southern culture and politics. Lincoln’s Navy Secretary, Gideon Wells, the lone conservative Democrat in the Cabinet, called the Radical plan “an atrocious scheme of plunder and robbery.”
But neither the war nor Radical Reconstruction killed Jeffersonianism completely; it received a brief revival under.... [MORE]
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Russell Kirk & the American Constitutional Founding
by Mark Henrie
Russell Kirk’s view of the American Constitutional Founding in 1787 was captured in his refusal even to speak of a “Founding”—a word that conjures images of some Great Man, a Solon, Lycurgus, or Aeneas. A Founding implies the quasi-divine legislation of an entirely new way of life, the creation of a people. Kirk, however, read the Constitution of 1787 as a reworking of traditional English and colonial American practice, rather than anything new or particularly speculative. Certainly it is fanciful to imagine immediately deducing bicameralism, for example, from any postulate of natural right. For Kirk, just as the constitutions of the states were prudent revisions of colonial charters, so also the 1787 U.S. Constitution was a slight adjustment of the Articles of Confederation. Kirk was surely correct that whatever the “intention” of the drafters of the Constitution, this was the “understanding” of the ratifying conventions of the states, whose consent established our political regime.
Even if we can speak of an American Founding, Kirk’s conservative political science raised and attempted to answer questions that are otherwise begged in the patriotic narrative.... [MORE]
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