Free Republic

by Michael Barone Other Articles by Michael Barone Forgetting the Founding Fathers 06/09/04 Are our great universities abandoning the study of the American Revolution and the Founding Fathers? It looks like they are. Two of the leaders in colonial- and revolutionary-era scholarship, Bernard Bailyn at Harvard and Gordon Wood at Brown, are being replaced by historians with no apparent interest in the Revolution and the founding. The same happened some years ago at Yale when Edmund Morgan retired. Bailyn, Wood, and Morgan are members of a generation of American historians who have produced a luminous body of scholarship on colonial America,...

In a recent piece of hate mail, I was taken to task for using the term "God-given rights." "GOD doesn't give rights; the CONSTITUTION does," wrote the critic from Surf City, California. Actually, the constitution acknowledges the rights that are established in the Ten Commandments of God. Like Mr. Surf City, Judge Myron Thompson misunderstood the relationship between God and government when he ruled that Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore cannot display the Ten Commandments. In this iconic battle between American values and liberal secularism, every political and social debate that is worth the fight will be won or...

Taxes & Spending Gen. Wesley Clark's New 'Insights' Into U.S.'s Founding by David Freddoso Posted Jun 18, 2003 Text Size: S M L printer-friendly email to a friend Liberals Totally Wrong in Attacks on Prop 13 The Tax Revolt Turns 25 Some Facts About the Federal Deficit It's Not Ideological, Just Sound Economics Maybe you thought you were familiar with the founding documents of the United States: the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers. Well, your understanding is apparently wrong. Gen. Wesley Clark--the man who brought you the debacle in Kosovo--seems to have discovered brand new insights into...

Voluntary Alternatives to Taxation Stuart K. Hayashi Most Americans believe paying taxes is a patriotic duty. Yet this very nation was founded upon people evading taxes in 1776. When individuals don’t pay taxes, the government goes after them with guns, even though they haven’t used force on anyone else. Thus, taxation is an initiation of physical force against the individual’s right to life, liberty and property. Because taxation is forcible extortion, it violates your right to property. If you don’t pay taxes, you can be jailed, hence depriving you the right to liberty. And if tax “evaders” fight tax...

Friday, 10 November, 2000, 18:44 GMTEurope's 10 founding 'fathers' More than 95% of European men alive today are descended from 10 ancient groups of forefathers, according to new genetic evidence. Scientists believe that 80% of European men inherited their Y chromosomes from primitive hunter-gatherers who lived up to 40,000 years ago. The other male ancestors are likely to have been migrants who arrived in Europe from the Near East about 10,000 years ago bringing with them farming technology. The evidence comes from a new study of the male (Y) chromosome, which is passed only from father to son and can...

How Conservatism Guided America's Founding Forrest McDonald Editor's Preview: It was not state weakness, but incipiently totalitarian behavior by unchecked state governments in the years after 1776, that set the stage for the Philadelphia Convention of 1787. National authority must be strengthened; but how? Liberty is secure in the United States today only because Washington, Hamilton, and their conservative allies bested radical ideologues like Jefferson and Madison in the ensuing struggle to shape the U.S. Constitution. Thus John Locke, philosophical father of the latter group, may be a less benign influence on history than is commonly supposed: millenial excesses from...

The Claremont Institute This is the print version of http://www.claremont.org/writings/jaffa90.html. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The American Founding as the Best Regime The Bonding of Civil and Religious Liberty By Harry V. Jaffa Posted May 15, 2002 In the great journal of things happening under the sun, we, the American people, find our account running, under date of the nineteenth century of the Christian era. We find ourselves in the peaceful possession, of the fairest portion of the earth, as regards extent of territory, fertility of soil, and salubrity of climate. We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing...

Pittsburgh YOUNG AMERICANS FOR FREEDOM A Pittsburgh Chapter of the Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) is forming. Anyone who is a student (high school or college) in the Pittsburgh area is welcome to join. If you want more information feel free to contact Mark Harris - hadmharris@adelphia.net We are hoping to create a strong and active chapter and we will need help, and MEMBERS. So if you are a young Conservative PLEASE check us out. If you don't live around Pittsburgh or are not young e-mail Mark or check out www.YAF.com to see if there is anything you can do.