Free Republic

Harry Jaffa has died. I remember, in order of increasing importance: 1. The character. Harry was a handful. Early in the Reagan years I got an excited phone call from him (was there ever a calm one?) about the fight over who should head the NEH. The frontrunner was M.E. Bradford, a learned English prof with a sideline in Confederate history. Irving Kristol then pushed Bill Bennett, for his manifest talent, and to avoid re-fighting the Civil War in a Senate confirmation hearing. This was one of the opening shots in the paleocon/neocon fight. (Like many great struggles, it began...

July 3 marks the last day of the battle of Gettysburg 150 years ago -- Pickett's Charge, the "high water mark of the Confederacy." July 4 is of course Independence Day, but this year it is also the sesquicentennial of the surrender of Vicksburg, which split the rebel states in two by securing the length of the Mississippi for the Union. This week, a century and a half ago, marked the certain beginning of the end for the Confederacy and thus of slavery and the rise of the great Republic of freedom. To commemorate this week, I am spending the...

Our Embattled Constitution Harry V. Jaffa Professor Emeritus of Government, Claremont McKenna College and Claremont Graduate School -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Harry V. Jaffa is professor emeritus of government at Claremont McKenna College and Claremont Graduate School and a distinguished fellow of the Claremont Institute. He received his B.A. from Yale in 1939 and holds a Ph.D. from the New School for Social Research. He is the author of numerous books on political philosophy and American politics, including Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates; Equality and Liberty; The Conditions of Freedom; American Conservatism and the American Founding; and,...