Free Republic

Learning From Conservative History: Main Trails . . . and Less-Traveled Paths - 01/02/09 This is part three of a symposium on contemporary conservatism hosted by ISI at Yale in November, 2008. Read part one. Read part two.By training, I am an historian. I love the discipline and believe that historical mindedness—the ability to see and understand the grounding of current institutions, issues, and events in the complex matrix of the past—this is the superior way to make sense of reality.All the same, I have been troubled for over a decade by the growing interest of American conservatives in...

"Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it." If only! I'm sure that many of you have heard some form of that quip by Santayana, and I daresay that in an unguarded moment I may have actually used it in class, as if the study of history were mainly justified by its prophylactic utility. That's not fair to Santayana, who meant no such thing, but it is how the quip is commonly understood. If you don't know your history, then you are likely to step on the same landmines that your ignorant forebears stepped on, and then think...

The consequences of Richard Weaver By Roger Kimball | Volume 25, September 2006The past shows unvaryingly that when a people’s freedom disappears, it goes not with a bang, but in silence amid the comfort of being cared for. That is the dire peril in the present trend toward statism. If freedom is not found accompanied by a willingness to resist, and to reject favors, rather than to give up what is intangible but precarious, it will not long be found at all.—Richard Weaver, 1962 In the great pantheon of half-forgotten conservative sages, the southern writer Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963)...

Like the pairing of lobster and quail on the menu, the inaugural luncheon in the Capitol after President Bush's swearing-in brought together people who typically wouldn't sit together. Former President Bill Clinton and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), joined by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and his wife, Victoria Reggie Kennedy, shared a table with Karl Rove, the president's chief political adviser. Former President Jimmy Carter, an outspoken critic of Bush's Iraq policy, was seated with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, while the president's 23-year-old daughter Jenna was able to chat with 70-year-old Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and 84-year-old Supreme Court Justice...