Erler on Citizenship
Prof. Ed Erler of CSUSB writes in “Defining Citizens” that the notion of birthright citizenship is not something that should be assumed: By itself, birth within the territorial limits of the United States, as the case...
Read more of this articleAnniversary of the Civil War
This coming year will mark the 150th anniversary of the Civil War. E.J. Dionne, at the WaPo, posts an article on getting the cause for the war correct before the remembrance begins: When the war started, leaders of the Southern...
Read more of this articleIs Democracy Dangerous?
In a review of The Servile Mind: How Democracy Erodes the Moral Life by Kenneth Minogue (amazon) Mark Blitz restates the classic paleo position on culture via Minogue: Minogue is a distinguished professor emeritus of political...
Read more of this articleThe Constitution at Last
Charles Kesler (Claremont-McKenna College) has a nice essay on the importance of the Constitution. Is the Constitution important? Should it be so? We are reminded of this from the recent Ryan v. Brooks debate at AEI. There...
Read more of this articleLincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation (1863)
By the President of the United States of America. A Proclamation. The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly...
Read more of this articleDid Lincoln Come to Support Emancipation?
Or was it that he believed in the rights of all men all along? Allen Guelzo levels a devastating critique at historian Eric Foner in this review of his new book The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery: Mr. Foner’s...
Read more of this articleLiberty, Law, & James Wilson
We commend to your reading this essay: James R. Zink, “The Language of Liberty and Law: James Wilson on America’s Written Constitution,” American Political Science Review 103, no., 3 (August 2009) : 442-455 See...
Read more of this articleHappy Fourth of July
Happy 4th of July! On June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee brought a resolution to the floor: Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance...
Read more of this articleThe Center Welcomes Michael Zuckert
Michael P. Zuckert, Ph.D Speaking Monday, March 15th: “Slavery & the Constitutional Convention of 1787” Zuckert (B.A., Cornell University; Ph.D, University of Chicago, 1974) is a Notre Dame professor, and has written on...
Read more of this articleStatesman of the Month
Abraham Lincoln
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
-Speech at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. November 19, 1863
