Free Republic

Civility to oneÂ’s opponents, certainty, restraint, federalism, economy, thrift, and respect for faith: these and other Coolidge ideals are needed today. Debt takes its toll. To no one had this ever seemed clearer than to a 61-year-old farmer named Oliver Coolidge, who languished in Woodstock Common Jail in Windsor County, Vermont, in the spring of 1849. Oliver was behind bars because he owed a neighbor, Frederick Wheeler, $24.23. He had not honored a contract because he lacked the money to honor it. Now his debt had climbed to $29.48 because the justice of the peace had ruled that he had...

Action is something Americans of both parties demand of their presidents these days. This is natural for Democrats, whose heritage is all action, starting with Franklin Roosevelt and his Hundred Days. But Republicans like energy and a big executive as well. Over the course of the campaign this past year, any number of political stars, including Governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana, argued that only an energetic candidate would be up to the job of managing the U.S. fiscal crisis. Mitt Romney worked hard to let voters know his party could beat the Democrats in the legislative arena. He swore up...

Progressivism is an utterly bankrupt ideology, and Calvin Coolidge knew it. In his Speech on the Occasion of the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, he said the following: About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied...

Patriotism is easy to understand in America. It means looking out for yourself by looking out for your country. In no other nation on earth does this principle have such complete application. It comes most naturally from the fundamental doctrine of our land that the people are supreme. Lincoln stated the substance of the whole matter in his famous phrase, "government of the people; by the people, and for the people." The authority of law here is not something which is imposed upon the people; it is the will of the people themselves. The decision of the court here is...

I think it was Calvin Coolidge. He had a budget surplus every year and the national debt was reduced from $22.3 billion in 1923 to $16.9 billion in 1929. He cut the top tax rate from 56% to 25%.

The American public may be about to do something it has not done in 88 years: elect a former governor of Massachusetts as president of the United States. In anticipation of this election, we can only hope that some of Governor Romney's advisors will introduce him to his predecessor, Governor Calvin Coolidge. Coolidge was one of the most popular presidents in U.S. history, but historians have tended to underestimate his importance. However, with the advent of Reagan and the revival of conservatism, Coolidge's place in history has been re-appraised. Historian Paul Johnson has called Coolidge "[t]he most internally consistent and...

Theodore Roosevelt seems to be in vogue among certain Republican contenders -- but his Republicanism might not be the most conservative brand available. In fact, a big ideological contender against Roosevelt is Calvin Coolidge, another Republican stalwart of the 20th century. Though these two men occupied the same political party, each embodies one side of a struggle between philosophical factions that continues today. In summarizing his view of the proper role of the presidency, Roosevelt in his autobiography writes, "I declined to adopt the view that what was imperatively necessary for the Nation could not be done by the President...

America no longer enjoys a peacetime economy. I speak not of Iraq or of Afghanistan. I speak of the class warfare economy officially imposed on the nation in Barack Obama’s Osawatomie speech. I say “officially” because this speech is merely a logically outgrowth of Obama’s long-held redistributionist ideology, finally manifested in the “spontaneous” “Occupy Wall Street” movement—the phony rage aimed at “one percenters” who fail to “pay their fair share in taxes”—phony, because if it were real, it “Occupy Wall Street” would move uptown and become “Occupy General Electric.” Such class warfare is much older than Obama or OSW or...

Conservatism is a negative philosophy. I don’t mean “negative” in the sense that it proposes something undesirable. I mean that it seeks to negate objectionable aspects of the human condition. Man has a propensity for evil. This means that men must be restrained in some fashion — which is precisely why conservatives have typically stressed religion, conventional morality, humility, etc. But conservatives have also stressed that any government designed to be powerful enough to restrain men will also be run by men, whose collective propensity for evil is to be feared even more. Conservatives have never argued that man should...

Perry's America may seem familiar to centenarians By JOE HOLLEY August 28, 2011 At first glance, it would seem that the 30th president of the United States and the man who would be the 45th have little in common. Famously silent Calvin Coolidge, after all, not only had little to say but also hated to campaign, unlike White House aspirant Rick Perry, an indefatigable campaigner whose tongue occasionally runs ahead of his brain. Coolidge was a rectitudinous New Englander presiding, paradoxically, over a raucous Jazz Age; Perry is a gregarious Texan who, paradoxically, stands to inherit a nation shaken by...

20 minutes, but he's already delivered one of the best lines in the campaign: "I'll work every day to try to make Washington, D.C., as inconsequential in your life as I can." This will be grand news to Schylar Capo of Virginia. The 11-year-old made the mistake of rescuing a woodpecker from the jaws of a cat and nursing him back to health for a couple of days and, for her pains, was visited by a federal Fish and Wildlife gauleiter (with accompanying state troopers) who charged her with illegal transportation of a protected species and issued her a $535...

Presidential scholar David Pietrusza reflects on the legacy of the 30th president at a symposium hosted by the Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation. Mr. Pietrusza considers the influences that shaped President Coolidge’s political philosophy and why “Silent Cal” never wasted or minced words.

On Presidents’ Day, Americans take a day to recognize the office of the presidency – and to reflect upon the country’s best. FrumForum asked freshman Republican members which president they admired the most, but excluded President Reagan from contention to give the other presidents a fair chance. The fourteen Republican members who responded gave a range of answers, but President Abraham Lincoln came out on top. Interestingly, these freshman congressmen have something in common with President Obama, who has identified Lincoln as his favorite president. Independent voters also agreed – a new Gallup poll shows that Lincoln was their favorite...

The vexatious wave of de facto strikes by absentee Wisconsin public school teachers and Illinois-bound state legislators that has greeted newly-elected Badger State Governor Scott Walker’s vigorous attempts to rein in unsustainable public spending inevitably summons to mind the case of a once-obscure, first-term Massachusetts governor and a more overt public employee strike of nine decades ago. The governor in question: the famously taciturn Silent Cal Coolidge. The work stoppage in question: The Boston Police Strike of 1919.

President Obama's 2012 budget is the numerical embodiment of his State of the Union address - both being systematic distractions from the main, current tasks of governing. President Obama's 2012 budget is the numerical embodiment of his State of the Union address - both being systematic distractions from the main, current tasks of governing. His plan includes, according to Yuval Levin, editor of National Affairs, "no entitlement reform, no tax reform, no significant spending reform, indeed no meaningful change of direction of any sort." All the elements of a status quo budget are present. A dependence on rosy economic assumptions...

The question on the Right for a distressingly long time has been: “Who is the new Reagan?” It is the wrong question. There will never be another Reagan. Just as there will never be another Washington or another Lincoln. Our next great leader will be great not because he or she emulates the greatness of another but because a unique greatness is found within that person. Reagan was not the “new” Taft or the “new” Goldwater. He was Reagan. And that was more than enough. Yet, this question leads us to different styles of leadership or personality. Reagan was one...

Members of the Congress: In meeting the constitutional requirement of informing the Congress upon the state of the Union, it is exceedingly gratifying to report that the general condition is one of progress and prosperity. Here and there are comparatively small and apparently temporary difficulties needing adjustment and improved administrative methods, such as are always to be expected, but in the fundamentals of government and business the results demonstrate that we are going in the right direction. The country does not appear to require radical departures from the policies already adopted so much as it needs a further extension of...

Noted presidential historian David Pietrusza discusses America's most neglected great president, Calvin Coolidge, on the August 13, 2010 Glenn Beck program.

We meet to celebrate the birthday of America. The coming of a new life always excites our interest. Although we know in the case of the individual that it has been an infinite repetition reaching back beyond our vision, that only makes it the more wonderful. But how our interest and wonder increase when we behold the miracle of the birth of a new nation. It is to pay our tribute of reverence and respect to those who participated in such a mighty event that we annually observe the fourth day of July. Whatever may have been the impression created...

Silent Cal’s Almanack By David Pietrusza A review: “Restricted immigration is not an offensive but purely a defensive action. It is not adopted in criticism of others in the slightest degree, but solely for the purpose of protecting ourselves. We cast no aspersions on any race or creed, but we must remember that every object of our institutions of society and government will fail unless America be kept American.”[1] This was the straight-forward observation of an American President! But not from someone you would normally have suspected. These words are not tinged with racism or hate, but logic. These words...