Judy and family, I cannot think of a more fitting tribute to David than this “grand gathering” of Grand Rapidians.

Nine years ago I wrote an essay on patriotism, highlighted by my son’s exceedingly American golf shirt.

It is a very great honor and a high privilege, Governor Godwin, to come to the Commonwealth of Virginia and to this beautiful and significant home and to participate in this wonderful ceremony.

On this 247^th birthday celebration of our nation, we might be forgiven if we indulge the impulse to feel good about ourselves.

Many accounts of Gerald Ford’s service in Congress, where he served from 1949 until 1973, depict him as a moderate-minded lawmaker who was willing to work with members of the other party to pass legislation.

I write of freedom. It’s that time of year when, on either side of the summer solstice, a federal holiday draws Americans’ attention to freedom.

Back when I was an undergraduate, one of my professors recommended to me a book by the psychologist Julian Jaynes.

On June 15, 2023, three days before Fathers Day, I had the opportunity to spend time with Tom Brady Jr. and Tom Brady Sr. when they came to Grand Rapids, Michigan.

As Charles Dickens wrote about Victorian England in A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

I’ll admit it: I’m biased. I attended a religiously-affiliated undergraduate college, and then went to a Catholic graduate school, and spent my career teaching at schools with religious missions.

My friend James Matthew Wilson recently wrote an essay over at Public Discourse that highlights an essential issue we rarely spend time discussing: the need to belong.

How could Gerald Ford, a fiscally conservative Republican, work with the liberal Democrats of his generation led by John F. Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, and Tip O’Neill?

The American founders were acutely aware that human beings desire power. Like Lord Acton, they believed that power tends to have a corrupting effect on those not only who attain it but those who reach for it.

Over the past decades, the controversy over civics education in the United States has only gotten worse.

One of the more tiresome tropes that has emerged over the last seven years is the phrase “a threat to our democracy.”

Like an atom, a polity consists of different elements, one of which is that there has to be some underlying principle of unity.

Perhaps the most remarkable Boy Scout Annual Awards Dinner in scouting history took place at the Sheraton-Park Hotel in Washington, DC, on the evening of December 2, 1974.

The 14^th Amendment is back in the news, which typically means something is afoot somewhere in this country, but is also an opportunity to review one of the most important provisions in our Constitution

In all the handwringing over so-called “populism,” much can be gleaned about our current politics when certain groups see their inferiors as exercising the franchise in the wrong way…

This series concerns itself with our American heritage, and in particular to make contemporary readers more appreciative of the “blessings of liberty” that have been vouchsafed to us.