American Founding
Story Stream
God, Liberty & Epicurus February 28, 2025
On April 29, 1778, two great figures of the Enlightenment, Benjamin Franklin and Voltaire, met at the Paris Academy of Sciences. As Voltaire saw Franklin approaching, he declared “Behold the man who tamed the lightning!” Then, stretching his hands ov...
New Life for the Great American University? February 19, 2025
University education has long been both scorned and desired in America. L. Frank Baum’s classic The Wizard of Oz lampooned college students—both their failure to use their brains while thinking “great thoughts” and their laziness. Yet for most Americ...
REVIEW: Remaking the World February 21, 2024
Do we need another book about 1776? There is a glut of books about this momentous year in American history, but Andrew Wilson’s new book Remaking the World stands out nevertheless. It is the work of a Christian looking at history, yet it manages not ...
Was the Constitution a Coup? February 15, 2024
H . W. Brands here undertakes to tell the story of American federal politics down through the Revolution of 1800. He does so chiefly through the writings, public and private, of the Federalist era’s four leading political figures. His approach will p...
A Stoic American Founding? January 30, 2024
In The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America, Jeffrey Rosen undertakes to examine how leading American Founders learned from ancient writers on moral philosophy, especially the St...
Is Conservativism’s Future Strauss or Voegelin? January 29, 2024
Glenn Ellmers is the Salvatori Research Fellow in the American Founding at the Claremont Institute, an influential conservative think tank in California. He believes that the United States is a post-constitutional nation and the cause of the loss of ...
‘Mental Maps of the Founders’ Review January 18, 2024
On July 1, 1776, as the Declaration of Independence was about to be published, its author complained to a friend that it was painful, at such a fraught moment, to be in Philadelphia, “300 miles from one’s country.”Thomas Jefferson’s sentiment, expres...
Have Universities Ever Been a Source of Wisdom? January 16, 2024
Over at Power Line, while discussing the Claudine Gay/Harvard scandals, John Hinderaker raised the “broader question whether universities collectively have even been a source of wisdom on political issues.”It’s an important question, and it has a cle...
