Free Republic

While Charles de Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws was an oft-cited source during the federal convention of 1787, his observations weren’t limited to the balance of powers in government. He also touched on the nature of educational systems in republics and despotisms. Parents and educators form our first impressions. They prepare people for civil life in republics and for servitude in despotisms. From previous chapters, Montesquieu had explained the springs, the forces which propel nations. Public Virtue is the propellant in republics, while the bayonet of fear prods despotisms. Education in despotic countries debases the mind. The mind of...

While Charles de Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws was an oft-cited source during the federal convention of 1787, his observations weren’t limited to the balance of powers in government. He also touched on the nature of educational systems in republics and despotisms. Parents and educators form our first impressions. They prepare people for civil life in republics and for servitude in despotisms. From previous chapters, Montesquieu had explained the springs, the forces which propel nations. Public virtue is the propellant in republics, while the bayonet of fear prods despotisms. Education in despotic countries debases the mind. The mind of...

The first objection from Anti-Federalists was that the extensive territory of 1780s America could not support republican government. Citing a widely respected Charles De Montesquieu, republican government requires the consent of the governed across a small territory with a relatively homogeneous population. James Winthrop of Massachusetts expressed a common belief when he said, “The idea of an uncompounded republic [the size of the United States,] containing six million inhabitants all reduced to the same standard of morals, of habits, and of laws, is in itself an absurdity, and contrary to the whole experience of mankind.” Liberty under a single code...

In a 1792 column in the National Gazette, James Madison* briefly touched on Charles de Montesquieu’s three operative principles of government: fear in despotisms, honor in monarchies, and virtue in republics. From this starting point, the genius Madison divided governing principles into three species which reflect their predominant spirit. Madison:May not governments be properly divided, according to their predominant spirit and principles, into three species of which the following are examples?First. A government operating by a permanent military force, which at once maintains the government and is maintained by it; which is at once the cause of burdens on the...

Perhaps the most prominent commonality among conservative authors and bloggers is their emphasis on first principles and their application to modern times. Everything flows from first principles. Since laws and traditions connect to the past, great truths will not appear until we see the chain that links them to others. Our Framers studied the past, yet were not slaves to it. They let experience be their guide as they applied first principles to their British and colonial heritage. As Charles de Montesquieu showed, and our Founding generation demonstrated, the first principle, the spring from which republics emerge and are maintained...

Perhaps the most prominent commonality among conservative authors and bloggers is their emphasis on first principles, and the application of them to modern times. Everything flows from first principles. Since laws and traditions connect to the past, great truths will not appear until we see the chain which links them to others. Our Framers studied the past, yet were not slaves to it. They let experience be their guide as they applied first principles to their British and colonial heritage. As Charles de Montesquieu showed, and our Founding generation demonstrated, the first principle, the spring from which republics emerge and...

The spark for this squib is fear, a fear of not just where our once republic is going, but where it is. A government designed to “establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, (and) promote the general welfare,” not only doesn’t work toward these ends, it promotes policies that operate in direct opposition to them. The high criminals of the Obama administration will never be subject to the justice they deserve. Occupy Wallstreet, Black Lives Matter, and DNC supported riots at Trump rallies foment discord rather than ensure domestic tranquility. Common Defense? Purposely importing koranimals undermines the...

In Book XI of The Spirit of the Laws, Charles de Montesquieu touched on the nature of liberty and representation in republics. While the term ‘liberty’ is somewhat ambiguous, he ascribed to it tranquility of mind arising from the opinion each person has of his safety. In order to have this liberty, it is requisite the government be so constituted as one man need not be afraid of another. To foster liberty, free men send representatives to deliberative bodies to craft laws on their behalf. The great advantage of reps is their capacity to discuss public affairs in the course...

In earlier posts – here and here – I drew attention to the pre-eminence of Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu in and for a time after the eighteenth century, and I suggested that at least one of the reasons for his pre-eminence is still pertinent today. There are other such reasons, which I addressed at length in Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty and in Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift, and they, too, deserve consideration. I will discuss one such here. Montesquieu’s The Spirit of Laws is a large book, and it is difficult to know...

Every once in a while one gets an insight into the sad state of higher education in the United States. Back in 2008, when my agent was attempting to market the manuscript of what recently appeared in two companion volumes under the titles Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty: War, Religion, Commerce, Climate, Terrain, Technology, Uneasiness of Mind, the Spirit of Political Vigilance, and the Foundations of the Modern Republic and Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville, and the Modern Prospect, he ran into an unexpected snag. None of the editors at the trade presses he approached had ever...

Civilization Revisited by: John Hendershot, September 29, 2009 The distance between Left and Right in America seems greater now than at any time during the past forty years, and we are waging a fierce debate over the size, scope, and role of government in our lives. Governments of all stripes fall due to corruption of both principles and people, and if ever there was a moment when we needed insight into the oracles of our Founding Fathers, it is now. Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (1689-1755), was a prolific author. He wrote a couple of...

Tired of being called a “traditionalist?” Maybe you shouldn’t be. Traditionalists may know more about truth than we have been led to believe. Intellectuals, philosophers, and ersatz “progressives” have been hanging the albatross of tradition around conservatives’ necks for … well … let’s just say it is a long standing tradition for the intellectual elites to demean conservatives by calling them “traditionalists.” In this article, I will argue that tradition is a good thing, not a bad thing -- a smart position not a naïve one. I will suggest that the process we call “tradition” helps human beings understand and...

"The exorbitant power of the prince, and the extreme depression of the people, require that there should not be even a possibility of the least mistake between them. The taxes ought to be so easy to collect, and so clearly settled, as to leave no opportunity for the collectors to increase or diminish them. A portion of the fruits of the earth, a capitation, a duty of so much per cent on merchandise, are the only taxes suitable to that government."

George Bush: re-elected. Tony Blair: re-elected. John Howard: re-elected. Meanwhile the two outstanding opponents of the Anglo-American anti-terror alliance, Gerhard Schroeder and Jacques Chirac, are in the pangs of the most humiliating defeat and repudiation in recent European politics. Who says there's no justice in the universe? Schroeder's Social Democratic party this weekend suffered a crushing defeat in the state of North Rhine Westphalia, Germany's biggest and for many years a Social Democratic bastion. Chirac meanwhile is confronting a likely defeat in the May 29 referendum on the European Constitution. Schroeder had won his first election in 1998 as a...

Inferno Maurice Joly (John S. Waggoner, ed. and trans.) The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu:Humanitarian Despotism and the Conditions of Modern Tyranny Lexington Books, 2002, 392 pages. Reviewed by Daniel A. Doneson  Few books are more famous for what subsequent forgers do with them than for their original contents. Maurice Joly’s The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu, first published in Brussels in 1864, is indeed a very strange book. And its strangeness is multiple. The history of its genesis and multiple fates is bizarre-and its content no less so.Who was Maurice Joly? By best guess he...

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