The Michigan legislature, in 1994, declared Russell the state’s “greatest man of letters.”

This series aims to help our readers understand the complexity of our Constitutional system, in no small part by detailing the arguments involved in its construction.

Recent times have been tough for Boy Scouts of America.  Although still one of the largest youth organizations in the US, its ranks have dwindled from about 3 million in the 1970s to fewer than 800,000 today

One question I like asking people is, if they went to college, which books had a special impact on either their thinking or their general approach to life.

Readers of these pages know our special interest in the political thinking that took place around the founding era and now it can help illuminate our politics today.

It is a fantasy of the industrial episode—that brief blip in human history that began with the Industrial Revolution but is now showing signs of congestive heart failure, complete with the attendant edema below the knees—that infinite desires can be satisfied indefinitely in a finite space.

In my former life as a professor, and in my current non-professional life, I’ve advocated for a school of thought called “localism.”

The coarsening of public discourse has brought attention about the need to back civility back into the culture.

Much of our lives become embroiled in and defined by our obsessions with things “fleeting and failing,” but we can never silence the still, small voice within us that tells us to seek for truth and meaning beyond the ephemera.

The framers of our Constitution worried most about the power of the legislature, and for that reason directed much of their attention to checks upon legislative power.

Executive privilege is the constitutional principle that permits the president and high-level executive branch officers to withhold information from Congress, the courts, and ultimately the public.

I’ve long claimed that, in a republican system of government, if presidential elections become the system’s central feature then that system is already in deep trouble.

In an earlier essay, we talked about the problem of whether we can trust our senses.

There is much debate about whether America had a “Christian Founding.” Like many disagreements, the position one takes often depends on the assumptions one, and these assumptions need defending.

Here we go again. The presidential primaries are upon us.

Last week I opined that Washington’s “Farewell Address” to the nation was the best of its genre.

It would not be difficult to make the case that Gerald Ford was the greatest athlete ever to serve as President of the United States.

We’ve been subjected a great deal to the claim that we live in unprecedented times, but I suspect that only our liberal use of the term counts as unprecedented.

My mother had a democratic head and an aristocratic heart.

In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle defines virtue as the mean between the extremes. While few people confuse courage with its lack (cowardice), there are many who might confuse it with its excess (bravado or cockiness).