Whatever one may think of President Trump, perhaps the greatest hope for Making America Great Again is not found in a particular president but in the American people’s own charter of government: The Constitution of the United States. H.L. Mencken famously defined democracy as “the theory that the common people know what they want, and […]
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History Without Reading
Recognizing, and acting, on the reality of student life as it is currently lived means imagining a world without books—broadly construed—as a means toward preventing their disappearance. “I cannot live without books,” Thomas Jefferson famously wrote John Adams in 1815. Jefferson did not believe the American republic could survive without books—or without people to read […]
Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin
On February 12, 1809, Abraham Lincoln was born in Hardin County, Kentucky; and Charles Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, England. The coincidence of their being born on the same day might lead us to think about the points of similarity in their lives. William Herndon was Lincoln’s friend and law partner, and he wrote one […]
The Humanities in a High Tech World
Scientists and physicians can figure out whether a new drug actually extends lives, and mathematicians can calculate the costs, but science alone cannot provide a considered judgment about who should have those benefits and at what price. From the 1830s to the 1860s, a South Carolina slave named Dave was a potter and a poet. […]
Solidarity and Subsidiarity
Each American knows he or she is a citizen, but also more than a citizen. Solidarity with all human beings—through a universal conception of rights and of citizenship in the City of God—means that our world isn’t irredeemably divided into bands of friends out to rob their enemies blind. The future belongs to the leader […]
