History

A few historical and inconvenient notes left on the cutting room floor during Black History Month.

What conquest built justified the conquest—not because the process was clean, but because the result expanded human freedom and flourishing beyond what existed before.

What is called Black History Month might more accurately be called “the sins of white people” month.

Hamilton did not as treasury secretary implement, or espouse, any system of protective tariffs or bounties.

In the wilderness of the New World, the Plymouth Pilgrims had progressed from the false dream of communism to the sound realism of capitalism.

Underlying the political collectivism of the anti-Columbus crowd is a racist view of human nature.

The American Revolution remains unique in human history: a revolution–and a nation–founded on a moral principle, the principle of individual rights.

There is no better example of how one can balance America’s strivings and failures than that provided by the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass in his famous July 5, 1852, speech, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”

Patriotism is more than a sentiment. It is a necessity. To keep what history has presented to us, Americans must either love it or lose it. Balkanize America and you risk becoming the Balkans.

American and European intellectuals had been comparing the merits of a hypothetical world based on equality, reason and nature to the world in which they lived — based on habit, custom and superstition. The American Revolution tested their theories in the real world.

With the capacity to print forever, the US could fund its empire, fund its welfare state, fund its gigantic budget, fund its military, and all without bothering with actually doing much of anything beyond sitting behind screens. 

Not one of these “rights” can be provided to anyone without some other American reduced in his freedom.

Ayn Rand published The Fountainhead, and Rose Wilder Lane published The Discovery of Freedom, and Isabel Paterson published The God of the Machine, all in 1943.

“I am now a fundamentalist American; give me time and I will tell you why individualism, laissez-faire and… capitalism offer the best opportunities for the development of the human spirit.”

Few phrases from our country’s creation illustrate that disconnect better than E Pluribus Unum: out of many, one.

Penn’s commitment to a free society needs our re-commitment.

In the 19th century, liberalism was identified with the belief in and the defense of individual liberty in various spheres of life.

Washington knew his efforts were a means to an end—maintaining liberty. We would profit by reflecting on his words and whether the vision we act upon today reflects that vision or distorts it.

The pandemic response enabled new government powers of surveillance, enforcement, and hegemony, resulting in the ultimate and global experiment in social management under the guise of science.