Tag: Conservatism

  • Experience and Reason

    The following is Madison’s summary of a truly excellent speech by John Dickenson, a delegate from Delaware to the Constitutional Convention: Experience must be our only guide. Reason may mislead us. It was not Reason that discovered the singular & admirable mechanism of the English Constitution. It was not Reason that discovered or ever could […]

  • A Lesson in Constitutional Interpretation

    In light of the current debate on Capitol Hill, the quotation of the day comes from the Supreme Court’s majority opinion in D.C. v. Heller: Some have made the argument, bordering on the frivolous, that only those arms in existence in the 18th century are protected by the Second Amendment. We do not interpret constitutional […]

  • Post-Mortem, Episode II

    “Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?” “A Republic, if you can keep it.” — Benjamin Franklin, upon leaving the Constitutional Convention in 1787 I do not want to say much about the election today, but I do want to share a few thoughts. I will begin by referring the reader to […]

  • Election 2012: Please Vote

    I have been quiet about this year’s election, but not for lack of caring.  The last few months have been extremely busy for me; to my shame, my busy schedule has meant that I have been silent about what is likely the most important presidential election in more than 30 years, not to mention extremely […]

  • More on Inequality

    On the heels of my post on upward mobility comes an insightful post by Cato’s Michael Tanner. Two key quotations: In the end, however, one has to ask a more basic question. Why do we care about inequality at all? Poverty, of course, is a bad thing. But is inequality? After all, if we doubled […]