In the Tradition of Liberty.
In the Tradition of Liberty.
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FUSION’s archive of commentary.
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Serious debates about the future of K-12 education in the United States must reckon with two realities. First, government funding for public education has never been higher, crossing the $1 trillion mark for the first time just a few years ago. Second, student academic performance is abysmal by historical standards. Test scores plunged in the aftermath of the pandemic to some of the lowest levels ever recorded, accelerating a decline that began more than a decade ago. The timing is thus ideal for Oliver Lee Bateman’s new essay to take on sacred shibboleths in…
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“Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, / But to be young was very heaven!” Or so wrote William Wordsworth, recollecting the enthusiasms that accompanied the early days of the French Revolution. Of course, things didn’t quite turn out as planned. But hope springs eternal. And some of the fraternal hopes of the Revolution resurfaced in a new guise after the end of the Cold War, as the former European Economic Community was being transformed into the European Union. Despite some early setbacks (particularly in the Balkans), the luster of the European…
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This year is the 250th anniversary of two remarkable events: the birth of the United States of America and the publication of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations. Today, Smith is mostly remembered as the founder of economics as a separate discipline. Most of those who attempt to read Smith focus on Book I of his famous book. There they encounter the pin factory, the division of labor, the butcher and the brewer pursuing their own interests—other illustrations of how the market process brings individual plans into coordination without any central…
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If history is any guide, it is unwise for European royals to marry Americans. The marriage of King Edward VIII to twice-divorced American socialite Wallis Simpson led him to abdicate the British throne and live in France. The more recent marriage of Prince Harry to once-divorced American media personality Meghan Markle resulted in his giving up public use of his title and living in the U.S. One senses that in both cases the American in the relationship demanded and, by degrees, the royal relented. The great nineteenth-century novelists predicted all…
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That Spinks mentions St. Augustine in this last installment of his “meditations” on the Declaration of Independence is both surprising and unsurprising. It is surprising because there is no mention of Augustine in the Declaration itself. It is unsurprising, given Spinks’ approach throughout the series, which has drawn heavily from extraneous theological terminology and references. In this concluding commentary, Spinks employs a number of important terms not found in the text itself—terms with decided theological resonance. These include “faith,” “love,” “communion,” and “covenant.” One might include “conscience” in this category as well; in…
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In his response to Casey Spinks, John Fea objects to a “textualist” approach to the Declaration of Independence. Fea wants something “more nuanced: an approach that takes the document’s original purpose seriously while also recognizing how its significance has evolved.” For Fea, “the Declaration’s enduring significance lies not in its ability to transcend history, but in its capacity to be reinterpreted within it. It is a product of its time. It is also a resource for ours.” My purpose here is not to adjudicate that dispute, though as a philosopher…
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Many visiting European novelists wrote disparaging things about America. Georges Duhamel (1884-1966), author of America, the Menace, was probably the meanest of the French writers. The harshest among the English novelists—and arguably the harshest of them all—was Duhamel’s contemporary Rudyard Kipling, who lived in Vermont from 1892 to 1896, then traveled through America in 1899. This surprised me. Most of Kipling’s works offer a heroic conception of life, one that is neither exclusively British nor exclusively imperial. Whatever milieu he describes, he discerns a hierarchy, at the top of which lie…
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After 250 years of independence, the meaning of the American Revolution is still contentious. Coming so soon after the peak of woke hysteria in 2020, there has been a flood of bad history following the wake of the 1619 Project. As we celebrate the Semiquincentennial, it is the perfect time to reflect on the true origins of American independence. This means taking seriously the history of ideas. Socio-economic change, personal interests and prejudices, and pure dumb luck certainly played their part as they have done throughout history. But there was…
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When Viktor Orbán lost his reelection bid in April, political dissidents, foreign workers, and liberal young Hungarians breathed a collective sigh of relief. After years of working in the shadows, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and Vietnamese bike couriers could finally deliver food and alcohol without fear of arrest or deportation. Suddenly, a range of sex toys appeared on the same couriers’ delivery apps. Jubilant posts, memes, and news articles erupted online as Orbán’s media machine abruptly lost its grip. Many Hungarians can now look forward to a summer spent in Budapest’s newly-revived…
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This past month, in Chiles v. Salazar, the Supreme Court overturned a Colorado ban on “conversion therapy” in an 8-1 decision. The case was ostensibly a victory for legal conservatives and free speech, as only the fatuous Justice Jackson dissented from the majority’s decision. Conservatives, however, should be cautious in praising the majority opinion of Justice Neil Gorsuch, the basis of which is to be found not in traditional American conservative thought but liberalism. Gorsuch writes that “They may believe that state-imposed orthodoxies in speech pose few dangers and many benefits…